Re-doing the Kitsch-en

Ok, so I used that title just for attention...lol, it sounded better. And rather like an acronym which comes into existence because it sounds good, and then making up words to match the letters in the acronym, now I need to come up with the reason that it's a good title. When we had some plumbing work done in our kitchen and they cut holes in our ceiling more than a year ago...I covered up the holes with art.....line drawings of animals I'd gotten from a street vendor in Quebec years ago....kitschy art! I put them up as a joke when family was coming to visit, and they are still there. There, neatly tied in a bow for ya.

Right now we have the world's most boring kitchen....builder grade appliances and cabinets, formica and linoleum, 12 inch soffits near the ceiling (so they could put in cheaper cabinets)...everything as basic as you can get, and now it's all 18 years old since the house was built in 1990. The dishwasher hasn't worked in 10 years (unless you call me the dishwasher...) and kitchen badly laid out and a big waste of space.

So we are re-doing it...our first major house renovation. We went first to home Depot, picked out everything, got the whole design done, then they came back with a labor estimate nearly double the parts estimate. So now we are getting more estimates, deciding how we can cut down costs, etc. We are not going with Home Depot and have since gotten another estimate for $7k less which actually includes a lot more stuff. Even though we could save money by doing things ourselves, George and I are just not do-ers and really, really want to just have some one do it all. We are rather inept and also hate doing it.

The saga is probably just beginning. I'm the type that would like to leave the house in the morning, and come back at night with the kitchen re-done. Anyone have any recommendations for someone who could do that for us? And of course they must have impeccable taste and able to do it for half of what Home Depot wanted.

come on, make these comments useful to me!