It’s August 2024, over 100° F outside, and I’m stuck in bed with a fever when my husband turns and asks, “what are your must haves for a house?”

We’d been discussing home buying for months at that point, and had our first meeting with a realtor scheduled later in August. Neither of us knew if we were ready to buy a house. We did know we were done renting the one we lived in.

“Big kitchen,” I said. “And a space for a big couch.”

Flash forward to now, June 2026, and I can tell you we got neither of those things.

We saw our future home in October of 2024. I’d looked at the listing the night before and absently said to my husband, “I think this is the one,” and that feeling continued into our viewing the next day. Our offer was accepted, and suddenly everything became about the new house.

Specifically, it became about the kitchen. We knew we had big things we wanted to do to it—we even discussed knocking a wall down. In the end, we decided to start with new appliances and fresh paint. The rest could wait.

Until we moved.

Hoo boy, the rest couldn’t wait.

The first problem was the cabinets. They look fine in the pictures above. Very 90s. Honey oak looks great with green, and we’re green people! We thought, “let’s keep these cabinets and paint the walls green.”

Except the cabinets were full of water damage. The kind that came from setting wet things into the cabinet and letting the water drip onto the wood. Some of them were completely unusable. Falling apart, almost. So, okay, we needed new cabinets. And we already knew we needed new appliances. Nothing worked.

“Might as well get new counters too, right?” my husband said.

Yeah, why not? We’re putting in new cabinets. Makes sense.

“And maybe new backsplash…”

I put my foot down. We’d moved in less than a month ago. Our whole life was still in boxes. I was just trying to build us a kitchen that worked, and you didn’t need backsplash for a kitchen to work.

(You do, in fact, need backsplash. I caved.)

With our list of things to do, we ripped out our first cabinets and put up new ones without complications. “This is easy!” we thought. “We’ll be done in no time.”

It was the first week of January. We wouldn’t cook in the kitchen till the last week of February.

The second problem we found was under the sink, hidden by an old cabinet protector (and thus missed by our home inspector). A tiny leak had dripped through a crack in the cabinet and soaked the subfloor. Luckily, the leak wasn’t bad enough to be noticed in the crawl space, or to leave any lasting damage.

You know what happens when you’re fixing the subfloor? You get real familiar with your flooring. Specifically the old, slightly peeling vinyl flooring our home came with.

“We’re changing everything else,” my husband said. “Why not change the floor, too?”

Okay, I can get behind a new floor. But I had one stipulation: I ain’t doing it myself. I do a lot of DIY home repairs and renovations. My rules are simple: if it’s electricity related or I’ll be crawling around on my knees for more than 30 minutes, I don’t want to do it. I’ve had too much spine surgery for a 32 year old. I know my limits.

The floor could wait. First, we had to put the kitchen back together.

No, scratch that. First, we had to wait for our cabinet supplier to send us the right sized cabinets. Twice.

By mid-February, we finally had everything in place and could put our new counters on. After that was details—backsplash, caulking, hardware, etc. In March we brought in a company to redo our floors, and by early April it was…done?

Four months of renovations (two of which left our kitchen unusable), and finally we had a kitchen we could call our own. It’s smaller than the kitchen I pictured when my husband first asked what I wanted our new house to have. It has less windows. No space for an island. Barely space for a breakfast nook.

Still, it’s my dream kitchen.

It’s the kitchen my husband bakes in, reconnecting with recipes his oma used to make. It’s the kitchen my dog muddies when he comes in from the backyard, leaving paw prints that one day I’ll miss. It’s the kitchen I write in, enjoying the view of our persimmon tree while a chorus of toads and songbirds serenade me. It’s the kitchen I host friends’ birthdays in. The kitchen I built with my own hands.

So build the kitchen that works. It’ll become the kitchen you love.