Kitchen Remodel: Part 1 Appliances

When we moved into our house we knew the kitchen would have to have some sort of a remodel.  You see the appliances are the ones I grew up with, yes the exact ones.  We bought my childhood home.  I plan to  write about this later.  They were no longer efficient and had grown lazy over the last 10 years or so from only having to work for 2 empty nesters.  When we moved a busy family in on top of them the appliances went into shock.  The first thing to go on strike was one of the large eyes on the cook top.  Let me tell you it is not easy to feed a family with only 1 large eye and 2 tiny eyes, but I made it work for 3 years.  Next up was the oven, but we were lucky and it just needed a heating element.  $50.00 and a little work from Sweet Daddy and we were back in business.  A year into this adventure the fridge called it quits -- never to breath again.  So off to Lowes' I went.  After looking around I found 2 I liked they looked exactly the same, same maker and everything, but one was $200.00 less.  So I found me a sales clerk and asked what the difference was.  He explained that they had accidentally gotten in 2 of the same floor models and were trying to get rid of the one.  So today was my lucky day, better yet it had a tiny scratch on the top left side.  He took off another 15%, yeah!  Can you believe this tiny scratch saved me $150.00

 and lets face it sooner or later we are going to scratch it.  So we went on like this for a while, new fridge, 3 eyes of a cook top, and an old oven with a new heating element.  That is until last year about this time when the dishwasher fell out of the cabinet, literally out of the cabinet.  Sweet Daddy found away to move the screws around and get it back secure.  This fix lasted until May of 2009 when the dishwasher came out again, this time there was no fixing it.  You see we had the original laminate counter top and over the last 30 years the wood underneath, that was supporting the dishwasher had worn away.  So to unload the dishes someone had to hold it upright and someone else had to unload the dishes.  Within a month of this happening the oven stopped cooking consistently, one time a dish cooked at 350 for 30 min. would come out raw and the next time burnt.  Then the other large eye on the cook top stopped working.  Are you getting this my kitchen was laying down and dying.  We had no budget for a kitchen remodel we had just redone the floors through out the whole house and had to expectantly get a new roof, so needless to say we were broke.  But I am glad we were because it forced me to be resourceful.  There would not be another trip to Lowe's for more new appliances.  So I went to my stand by Craig's List.  Guess what I found?  Someone was getting rid of their amazing, black, top of the line, Kitchen-Aid appliances just because they wanted stainless steel.  Yeah me!!!  Not only did they meet everything I had on my wish list --

 double oven,

 flat cook top,

 and a dishwasher with deep shelves.

  We only paid $450.00 for all of them plus a hood vent and a microwave that we passed on to Goodwill.  God is so good he gave me everything I wanted within an unbelievable budget.  He definitely got to show His glory on this one.