We are in week 3 of the HGTV kitchen remodel!

Recently, my husband and I bought a home that needs some TLC. Well, ok, it needs A LOT of TLC. The kitchen was a mess. Just look at the pictures below! Basically, we knew that if we bought this home the entire kitchen would need to be redone.  How and when we would do it was not clear. Then one night my husband Dan and I were talking about what a large project the kitchen remodel was going to be and how we could best approach the project. We love watching HGTV and happen to be watching it during our conversation, so we applied to the network and to make a long story short – we were cast on a show!

We are currenty taping the kitchen remodel on our new place for Professional Grade. How does the show work?  My husband and I serve as our own general contractors on the kitchen remodel.  We are working on making our kitchen look fabulous on a limited budget.  A group of contractors will judge our work and if we can get them to think that we spent more money than our actual out-of-pocket costs we win the difference! We can do all the work ourselves, use subcontractors or employ a mix of the two.

Honestly, the thought of taking on such a big project was a little overwhelming.  Not only would we have a strict timeline to keep, but we would have to put all of our negotiation skills to work in order to get good deals on everything.  AND we would have to take a lot of time out of our already busy schedules in order to devote a significant amount of time to this project.

After we were officially cast, we started to do our homework. We bought quite a few home and kitchen remodeling magazines.  We started a big file of clippings of beautiful kitchens that we liked.  We made a list of "must haves" and "would love" features.  Obviously, we were limited by our budget, but we were excited about the challenge - to design and install a beautiful kitchen on a budget and hopefully win some money (so we could fix up other parts of the house)!

Day 1 of filming was exciting.  We met our host Matt Blashaw and showed him around the kitchen and shared our vision.  After getting his input on how to tackle the project, we started the demolition of the kitchen.  This is still the best part of the project for me!  By Day 3 we had taken out a wall, all the cabinets were gone and the appliances were out. Next to go was the old drywall....By day 7 we had done the electrical and started to drywall. This past week we finished installing the new drywall and we started to install the cabinets.  This week we will finish the cabinets and start the flooring. Lots of work!

The past few weeks, however, have not come without some trouble. Despite the setbacks, we are moving along nicely and it's been great having HGTV around our place!  The pictures below show some of the progress that we have made.  I love how much more open the kitchen feels after we took out the wall.  Notice that the rest of the house is a big construction zone too!

So far, the biggest lesson that I have learned is that when you take on a large home remodel project things will not always go as planned.  Sometimes you just have to let those things go and do your best to work around the issues, especially if you are limited by time and budget (like us!).   I'll keep you posted on how we are coming along!