We sort of dove in the deep end when this project started. After spending a few days appliance shopping, comparing prices and stores we made our final choices and setup delivery for July 16th. Perhaps a bit optimistic as far as reno progress goes. Our original plan (pre-Covid) had been to get the appliances and use them in the old kitchen until later in the year. We had a cruise booked for October and I didn't want to start the kitchen reno until after that. No surprise, the cruise was cancelled so we decided to move kitchen renos to the left.
I could write a whole diatribe on appliance shopping and pricing, but I'll spare y'all unless there's a demand for it. We learned a lot, though. The biggest things we learned were that ALL the stores were within $5 in their prices on every appliance. Everybody had the same specials/sale prices on the same things, and the majority of stores stocked the same stuff. Home Depot has the best price meet/beat as far as I could tell (beat competitor pricing by 10%), and Costco's prices were generally ONE CENT(!) cheaper than Home Depot.
We knew we'd be using Ikea cabinets, and I had already spent some time laying out our kitchen and cabinet plan in their online planning tool. With the appliances ordered, it was time for a trip to Ikea to check out their cabinet systems in person and see what finishing ideas we might want to employ. As we live on an island with no Ikea this meant spending a day taking a ferry to the mainland (about a 2 hour crossing plus the time spent waiting, loading, unloading) and a 45 minute drive on either end.
Once in Ikea, we did find the types of ideas we were after. We also, unexpectedly, found we were able to sit down with one of their kitchen planners (we thought you needed to make an appointment weeks in advance), who led us through more design decisions and set us up with a complete component list to get what we were after. This is where it gets stupid. This trip was supposed to be a recce, and we weren't going to make any final decisions until later then buy what we needed online and pickup at a nearby distribution centre (no ferry involved for that one. But...it turns out Ikea has "in store stock", "warehouse stock" and "distribution centre stock"...and they don't mingle. The distribution centre only had about 9 of 180 items available, and you can't order/pay in store unless the items are in stock. The store doesn't carry anything but the cabinet handles. The warehouse (about a 5 minute drive from this particular store) had everything but 3 pieces, but they don't ship so if we wanted them we had to pick up.
So...we had our cabinet plan, our shopping list...and we were there. So pulled the trigger on them, and filled the truck up with kitchen. Suspension sank almost 5". Completely unprepared, I only had 2 small tarps (lots of scattered downpours of course), 1 tiedown strap (wife had helpfully moved the ones I left in the truck into the house) and a long piece of rope.
We left the house about 8 a.m. and got home just before midnight. Then unloaded...
This all happened before the first hammer blow to drywall occurred.