Fastest Project Ever

If our latest project is indicative of the rest of the year, it will truly be a roaring 2020.  It was one of the most stress free and fastest projects I have ever worked on.  It was not a big space but bigger than many laundry rooms that I have remodeled.  I am amazed at how smoothly this project went given all the activities during the Holidays, the five important birthdays around that time and our travel plans taking us away for most of the season.

This is how it all went down. The week following Thanksgiving a previous client called asking for help with a redesign of her laundry room. It was a mid-size laundry room with 30 year old laminate cabinets that were still in relatively good shape but definitely needed to be outdated.  Storage was not an issue as the current cabinets had plenty of shelf space available.  The main driver for this makeover was actually the old wine cooler that stopped working.  Once she bought a new undercounter wine cooler, then the old cabinets stuck out like a sore thumb. Funny, how that works.

So, at the end of November, I went over to talk about the room. Within the first hour I knew the reason for the upgrade and the budget I needed to work within.  We talked over s few ideas, I measured the space and then went home to draw up the design.

The following day I took my design to four showrooms, picked out a door style in each that fell within the budget and received estimates from all 4 dealers. That afternoon I went back to my client's home and gave her all the cabinet bids and countertop information that she'd need to make a decision. I thought at that point that we were probably not going to proceed until after Christmas.

The next day she called back with her decisions made.  I explained that I was leaving town in two days, so we had to meet that day or the next day at the cabinet showroom.  After agreeing on the following day, I called my contact at the showroom for an appointment for a specific time.  She liked the cabinets I picked out and we ordered them along with the knobs right then.  That was on Dec 4th.

The cabinets were in on Dec 26th, but we were all too busy for the install.  We put the install off until January 2nd.  Al did the install in one day.  There were some things he had to work out since the stubs were not the usual 16" apart and the new wine cooler was a larger one. We already knew it would fit but it had to be installed so that we did not interfere with the tile floor pattern.  The countertop guys will be out next week.

Tomorrow I have a meeting for my first kitchen design of the year.  I can guarantee it will take longer than this project. For starters,  kitchen remodels have more details to consider and usually take at least 5 design meetings.