Well, if money grew on trees

Well, I'd do a lot of things, but if there was even a little extra money, I'd re-do my whole kitchen this spring.

But since, alas, there are no money trees, and I doubt that there will be unexpected money arriving from anywhere else, we will just have to deal with what we have budgeted for this year. 

You may have noticed me complain a couple (hundred) times about my tiny kitchen. And hopefully by next year, we will be able to knock down the wall between the kitchen and dining room, and at least open it up a little bit. And maybe make it look something like this:

But knocking down the wall, and getting new cabinets and countertop will have to wait, at least for now. Hopefully, by next year. (Can I just say that I LOVE the blue paint? Oh, and the light fixtures.  And the white cabinets. )

However, we do need to replace most/all of our appliances this year. When we moved in, there was a range, an over the range microwave, and a dishwasher that came standard with the home.  Standard, in this case meant very, very bottom of the line.  We probably should have upgraded to begin with, but we had other things that were more important to us for upgrading/adding, like wood flooring in the dining room, and sod and fencing in the backyard.  We had also recently bought a "new to us" vehicle, and had recently had Jelly Bean.  So we went with the "standard" appliances.  We did, however, purchase a refrigerator, and while we didn't get the top of the line, it wasn't bottom of the line either.

Fast forward 10 years. Now, to be fair, we also didn't plan on living here for 10 years.  5 years.  Max.  But then I lost my job. The housing market tanked. We were concentrating on getting out of debt.  So if we had known we would have been here this long, at the very least, we would have replaced the appliances before we sold our house.  Which we thought was going to be 5 years ago.  But anyway, here we are, 10 years later.  Our dishwasher hardly runs and has several pieces that have broken off and that makes it very difficult to slide the racks in and out.  There are only two burners that work on the range.  The seal on the oven door came off. The touchpad on the microwave stopped working about 6 months ago and so we can't use it, even though it would run if the touchpad wasn't broken.  The fridge is actually fine.

So we are looking to buy new appliances, and because we can't make the kitchen any bigger (even if we do make it more open) and so we have decided to go with new, stainless steel appliances so that when/if we do sell, at least we can list in the description that we have "newer stainless steel appliances." LOL Which is the one reason that we are thinking of also replacing the refrigerator because our current fridge is white, and we can get a a package deal discount on all four appliances. 

I have been, of course, researching like crazy for months on what to get.  We still can't afford the top of the line, and in our house/subdivision/tiny kitchen, it doesn't make sense to get top of the line anyway.  Our kitchen will also only accommodate a traditional freezer over fridge combination, so that will make the refrigerator less expensive but it does also limit our options because not everyone makes that type of fridge in stainless steel.  On the other hand, I am leaning on keeping the fridge because it does work well and I don't like to replace just to replace.

We are hoping to buy them in March or early April.  I will take a picture of them when they arrive!