Our friends J & M took on an ambitious project a couple months ago. They did a quick reno of M’s dad’s place to get it ready for sale in a down real estate market. The plan was daring: tear out the existing kitchen and replace with new IKEA kitchen cabinets, install new lights, paint all upstairs rooms, living room and dining room. Luckily, they had an army of friends to help them, including us (we’re only a very small part of the army). We spent a week in the trenches. Here is a before picture of the kitchen.

kitchen before

In the beginning, we had wood cabinets that were in bad shape, laminate countertops, vinyl flooring that was peeling up.

tear out

Here we start ripping out the upper cabinets.

IKEA

While the men were tearing apart the kitchen, I was working with J on putting together IKEA cabinets.