Any time you undertake a remodeling project, you are going to have some amount of waste. We were completely gutting the kitchen so we would be producing quite a lot of it. You can make mindful decisions about it – or you can rent a dumpster and just let chips fall where they may. We tried to be mindful and we used the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle” to guide decision making.
We really USE our house. We host neighborhood soup nights, community meetings, discussion groups, game nights … all with a side of food and drink. We can tomatoes and pickles, sprout seeds, brew beer and wine, bake bread and culture the occasional yogurt. We do it all in a typical South Minneapolis bungalow kitchen that measures 9′ x 10′.
Not a lot of space to move in the old kitchen
One evening, while watching 4 people bump into each other getting ready for a potluck, I thought to myself, “This is just not working! I’ve GOT to do something with this kitchen, NOW!”
What had stopped me in the past was, of course, the money. Kitchens are the most expensive room to remodel and ours would be no exception, since little had been done to it since the house was built in 1921. But this time, exasperation pushed me all the way to the doors of the community bank. We weren’t getting any younger – or richer. If we didn’t do something now, it was increasingly unlikely we’d do it later. Loan in hand, we were ready to begin.
Think of It As An Adventure 