Cabinets are how much!?!

Being a home owner has made me appreciate how hard my parents worked to keep a roof over our heads.  I really just had NO idea how much home improvements, furniture, and other decor costs! I mean everytime I turn around we are faced with another set of expenses and unfortunately, I'm a numbers person so I quickly start adding everything up, adding in tax, cost of installation, etc. That's about the time the room start spinning, walls start closing in and I feel lightheaded!

This latest pricing panic attack came while figuring out how to finish out our kitchenette. Since we want to install cabinets around and above the washer and dryer we got into a debate about what to do with the rest of the kitchen. Should we finish the kitchenette the way we want the whole kitchen to look? Should we wait and remodel the kitchen at one time? What about granite, we need to install all the granite at once not piecemeal......ahhhhh!

It's no secret that I would LOVE a new kitchen, but that wasn't really top on the list of repairs/improvements. Nonetheless, I decided to do some price comparisons. I figured if nothing else it would give me a goal to work towards. Well, after shopping around I learned the kitchen remodel was going to be a big goal to work towards. I think my exact words when I saw the quote we, "Are you kidding me? It's just pretty wood!" The guy working at Home Depot clearly new I was a first time home owner!

Basically, for a new kitchen including cabinets, installation, countertops and some creative construction to make one wall of cabinets fit we are looking at $17,500. Ugh! I guess it makes sense, people always say you spend the most money on kitchens and bathrooms and unfortunately that's what our house needs. I know that we could trim the price of the kitchen by doing installation ourselves (which we were planning to do anyway) but it's still overwhelming.

Enter the resourceful husband - Brett spent much of home depot trip inspecting the kitchen displays and he's pretty confident he can build us custom cabinets. Honestly, since we were going to have to do some creative construction anyway, having the custom cabinets would make the most sense. For the time being we're going to leave the kitchenette unfinished but it is good to know when the time comes to upgrade the kitchen we have some better priced options.