Kitchen lighting is pretty costly

Ok so I gave the guy the go ahead. (And no that isn't my finished kitchen)

First we were going to do the costly but lovely silestone (Like granite but manufactured) countertops and just paint the cabinets. Kind of like putting a silk purse on a sows ear if you think about it. Our cabinets were the original issue (from 1959! Older even then me!)and to spend almost $3000 on a slab of stone over the old cabinets just didn't make sense.

I got to the Silestone because the original estimate of $8400 was for new cabinets and a formica counter tops. Home Depots formica was running $26/sq ft and the Silestone color I liked was only $42/sq ft. So it didn't seem that extravagant to go from $26 to $42. But actually Home Depot carries formica in prebuilt strips with a bullnose edge and built in backsplash for much less -only $110 for 8 ft long section. And we only need 2 8 ft sections! So comparing $220 with ten times as much...

And so it goes. Now we are in the midst of getting new builders grade cabinets instead of painting the old ones at the same size we had - 36" in the same configuration. We really didn't have much choice with our galley style kitchen. But we are also adding a new Venting Microwave, and new Cooktop as well as the new countertop in formica. For about the same price as painting the old cabinets with the new stone.

But of course that's not all. We had florescent lighting on top of our cabinets (kind of stupid if you think of it, who needs light at the top of the cabinets?) and an electrician needed to be called in to cap them off or redistribute them to other lighting options.

We were told to go look for lighting, but also to clear out the top cabinets one night this week. Well I am ashamed to say it took us 3 HOURS to clear out just the top cabinets and the broom closet and the pantry. There was literally tons of stuff. We must have thrown out 20 bottles of salad dressing and marinades, dating back to 2004 or so. And we ran out of boxes so as well before we even started packing up the panty. So besides the five or six garbage bags of old food we tossed, we also filled up about 10-12 Publix bags of pantry items which now reside behind my couch. And my entire living room is 1/8th inch deep in dust and filled with boxes.

But I digress...We didn't make it to pick out the lighting. So when the man showed up Thursday morning wanting to know what lighting we picked out, I went on the internet and found this photo.

Two hours later a quote was emailed to me at work, seconds before I was going into a meeting with my biggest client and the company bigwigs.

Guess how much?

$2500 more! for the electrical and the lighting! Boy I was pretty shocked. Hope we can swing this and we keep our jobs for a while.

It's scary to do something like this right now in this economy!