Kitchen Renovations

This summer, Josh and I decided to bite the bullet and get a loan for some much needed repairs on our house. Early fall, we had the shingles replaced (hired that one out, neither of us was keen to attempt that ourselves). Then in October, Josh and I redid our deck (mostly Josh, but I did help a bit, and critiqued a lot). Those two things needed to be done - the shingles were literally falling off in pieces anytime the wind blew, and the deck boards were rotten in several spots.
We've wanted to redo the kitchen ever since we bought the house 7 years ago, but it wasn't a priority since the cabinets were well built and everything was functional. But we had money left over from the other renos and IKEA was having their kitchen event ($200 in gift cards for every $1000 spent). We bit the bullet and ordered our dream kitchen. Just kidding, it was nowhere near that easy. Took us about 2 weeks of measuring and measuring again and second guessing and struggling with their planning tool online and not being able to check out online, etc. It was actually incredibly frustrating and at one point I almost called it quits.
But I didn't, and here's the pictures to prove it.

Before.

Another "before" view.

Getting the demo started.

Disconnecting the sink - the moment the panic set in.

Everything is out!

New floor in - which means the cabinets can go in!

Cabinets going in.

Yay! Cabinets in, doors and drawers on.

One month later! 99% done (just need to deal with that light fixture).

I am so glad now that we went ahead with the renovation, but there were certainly some moments when I was not terribly happy with how things were going. Not having a sink for 2 weeks was frustrating. It wasn't an easy month for the kids either, that's a lot of chaos for young kids to deal with. Doing it ourselves was difficult - thankfully my dad helped us out for two days with the labour, but the planning and layout was all up to us (okay, me). And I'm no interior designer, so we had some issues like the wrong sized cabinet being ordered (thankfully just one), a pull out cabinet that couldn't actually pull out because it hit the handle of the corner cabinet next to it, a countertop that ended up 1/4" too long (and Josh ended up sanding it down for 3 1/2 hours), a sink with no clamps to attach it to the countertop, a pantry door that's 1/2" too big for the opening...okay, the list just goes on. And to do this during December, which is a busy month no matter how many Christmas gatherings you have...I can't say it was fun, but I can say it was totally worth it.