Our kitchen renovation is about 99% complete! All that is really left is touching up paint and properly installing the dishwasher, which will both be done once the flooring is installed. But we’re officially moving onto replacing the flooring!

The kitchen renovation has been the largest DIY project my husband, Kevin, and I have tackled together. To be honest it went really smooth especially compared to the scale of the project. Of course, we had a couple bumps in the road with things not going as smoothly as planned. But I think we handled them mostly without stress or arguing, we were probably laughing more.

Things you don’t see on Instagram:

• About 20 minutes into demo day while disconnecting the pipes, one of the pipes snapped and water was spewing under the kitchen sink.
• We insulated the pipes around the kitchen sink TWICE because we researched and found a better way to do it. We put foam insulation instead of separating the batting insulation. This gave us a better R value, higher insulation value for a thinner amount of insulation. Not to mention it fit better behind the pipes.
• All of our cabinets came in fully assembled, which I would highly recommend if you do build your own kitchen. The cabinet around the fridge was a challenge because it was shipped not damaged but warped. So this cabinet had to be completely disassembled and rebuilt with better bracing and supports. It doesn’t seem too big a deal now, but at the time it was a pretty good headache. So much so that I contacted the company for a replacement but ended up we were able to fix it by the time the claim process was complete.
• One of the funniest things to look back on now was the fact that the smallest cabinet in the entire kitchen was one of the hardest to shim and level. In our defense it was only the second lower cabinet we installed.

We’ve been asked how we managed to do such a large project together, happily as a married couple. I feel like Kevin and I work together well as a team. We both bring different strengths. Plus, this isn’t our first project together. After other projects we’ve learned about each other more. When to give each other space to figure something out, when to trust the others opinion, and when to just not worry about the little mistakes or issues.

I’m really happy we’ve accomplished renovating our kitchen together, especially as a younger married couple. I’m also especially happy we’ve finished it before our first baby gets here, even though he’s only weeks away from arriving! We now have the flooring to tackle!

Thank you all for following along with our kitchen, a lot of you have had such a strong interest and have asked for updates when I haven’t posted in a few days. So thank you!