Certainly not me. I had no idea this would be such a chore. Or maybe subconsciously I did and that’s why it’s taken me so long to do it, I dunno.
I’ve disliked my kitchen counters since I moved into this house back in 2007. Why? They are tile, which makes them hard to work on and hard to keep clean. Sure, from a distance, they look interesting – maybe even nice. And that’s really their only saving grace.
As you can see from the pic, my kitchen is pretty big, so replacing the counters is a cha-ching proposition, which is the main reason why I’ve lived with them for so long. However, about a year or 2 ago, we set aside the money to replace them and off shopping I went.
I don’t like shopping, but this took it to a whole new level. There are just waaay too many choices to the point that I became paralyzed with indecision. The last straw was when I found myself at a granite place, wandering around hundreds of slabs.
How on earth was I supposed to imagine one of these chunks of rock in my kitchen and how on earth was I supposed to choose a color/pattern?
I figuratively threw my hands in the air in surrender and fled, reconciling myself to living with my tile counter tops. Living with them another year or 2 only made me like them even less. And then my sink starting rusting, literally disintegrating underneath the enamel surface.
Most of my home improvement projects become the homeowner’s version of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, where one thing leads to another and another. Like the time I got a new office desk and that turned into new carpeting for that room, which turned into new carpeting for the spare room. Or the time we were going to re-sod the yard and ended up installing a circular driveway and new landscaping first. Scope creep: the struggle is real.
If we had to replace the sink, it seemed a perfect time to replace the counters around it. And if I’m doing the counters, I need to also do the backsplash. At least I stopped there before I ended up looking at cabinets, flooring, or appliances. 🙂
And bam, just like that, the project was back on. Only this time, there’s a deadline. I have to get this done before my sink completely falls apart.
It’s taken me tons of phone calls, visits to half a dozen showrooms, quotes from 4 or 5 places, posts to Facebook to ask friends for their opinion, bringing several samples home to see how they look in my kitchen, and months to narrow things down to the material (quartz) and pattern (macchiato). I felt pretty happy that I picked out a sink and faucet in 10 minutes flat, but by this point in the process, I am definitely showing signs of decision fatigue.
I signed the contract and put down a deposit a few days ago – huzzah! And the fabricator came the next day to create a template so it’s on. In a couple of weeks or so, I should have this all behind me. And then I can start procrastinating on the next home improvement project.
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