As a gay man, it is important to have a really nice house. That’s the stereotype, right? We raise the property values in any neighborhood.

So, I guess it’s part of my duty to remodel my kitchen and dining area. I’m doing a mix of DIY and contractor. So far, I:

• Have scraped texture paint off the ceiling. A very icky job.
• Removed some ‘decorative’ (I use the term loosely here) wooden ceiling beams.
• Took out the existing ceiling fans/lights.
• Patched the ceiling where the beam were.
• Installed 7 recessed lights.
• Painted the ceiling.
• Removed four layers of various flooring and the underlayment. (Very labor intensive.)
• Am about 90% complete with laying down red oak tongue and groove flooring (to match the adjacent living room).

In addition, Adam painted the walls. So, I’ve still got to do touch up paint on the ceiling; patch some wall damage that happened during the floor work; finish touch up paint and paint all the trim; replace all wall outlets with new ones; finish the floor (that’s the only major thing left); add two more recessed lights and a chandelier and install new baseboards and shoe.

Then comes the contractor part. The cabinets need a facelift. The plan is to look into ‘refacing’ them. Also, I need new countertops and I may go with granite tile, which is supposed to be half the cost of solid granite. Also, I will need a new sink and faucet.

All this work should give me the look of a new kitchen without pricing it out of the range of the neighborhood. I hope to complete it all for about $9000.

Pictures and video will be included in followup posts.