After a couple weeks’ wait, week 30 of our project brought the installation of the island and kitchen cabinets. Suddenly the kitchen and great room feel dramatically more finished. There’s a long way to go, of course, but now it feels like we have an actual kitchen, as opposed to a warehouse or barn. It will feel even more finished when we finally have a kitchen window instead of a gaping hole covered by curtains, but that’s a different story.

As always, we did run into a few wrinkles along the way. As Enzo was placing the island, which isn’t by any means small, he noticed that if we were to stick with the original plan and center it under the skylight, we would have an awkwardly large space between the end of the island and the stove. Going back to the cabinet maker to swap in a larger island would be prohibitively expensive, so Enzo suggested that we use a larger countertop and have an overhang on two sides, instead of one. This will allow us to center he countertop under the skylight, while the body of the island will be shifted a bit toward the stove, providing a more balanced appearance and, as a bonus, room for additional seating at the island.

There are a few other minor issues—cabinet doors that seem misaligned, for example—but on the whole, we are very happy with how the kitchen is taking shape. Just being in the room, unfinished as it is, feels good, even if it’s painfully clear that we’re going to need to keep a step stool handy to get things out of the cabinets: they are very, very high.

The laundry room cabinets were also installed last week, so we’re finally getting a real look at how much storage we’re going to have there. The pantry cabinet is somewhat smaller than we would have liked, but there’s a decent amount of space in the cabinets above the launch pad. Still, we’re still not sure how much additional pantry space we’ll need in the garage, which means that we’re not certain whether we’ll have room to park my car there, which in turn means that we can’t know whether we should have the electrician mount our EV charging station inside or outside. The only thing that’s clear right now is that we have a lot of thinking to do.

At least the painting plan is nearly complete, with the lone open question being what to do with the master bedroom, which is contingent on the selection of carpet for that space. My personal preference would be to stick with a darker carpet color and lighter walls—something along the lines of what we had before—but we’re going with a beige color (technically, it’s called “Pecan”) upstairs, and our designer thinks we may see a significant cost savings if we use the same carpet throughout the house. If we were to go that route, we’d want to add some color to the walls in our bedroom to provide some energy and contrast. The carpet salesman is taking measurements this week that will give us a sense for what the price difference would be; with that information in hand, we should be able to make a final decision.

As we move toward the home stretch of the project, we’ve been on a bit of a spending spree, purchasing various plumbing and lighting fixtures so that they’re ready to go when Enzo and his team need them. Unfortunately, as we mentioned a few weeks ago, Enzo really doesn’t want anything lying around the house where it will get in the way of his crew. As a result, the foyer at our rental is currently chock-full, storing a tremendous accumulation of lights. It’s fortunate that we don’t get many visitors, because it’s actually a bit embarrassing.

Gallery: Week 30: Kitchen Cabinets