A Sigh Of Relief

When we began our home renovations, we knew we wanted to replace our kitchen countertops. We originally looked at granite and had picked a color that we thought would work in our kitchen. Then I started to have second thoughts. So I went back to Lowe’s (where we ordered our countertops from) and I looked at our flooring, wall color, and backsplash against the granite piece again. I wasn’t happy. At all. And if Momma ain’t happy, then everyone is going to hear about it forever and ever. So Mike and I started looking at quartz. I know everyone LOVES granite but if they knew that quartz has the advantages of granite and it requires less maintenance, and it’s available in a TON more colors. It’s heat and scratch resistant, and it is slowly becoming more and more popular in this country.

After looking for awhile, I found a color and pattern that I liked. We were fortunate since we hadn’t finalized our order yet so we were able to change the surface on our order. One thing that we refused to pay Lowe’s for though was to remove our existing countertops. They wanted $500 to do that. If any of you really know my husband, you know he wouldn’t pay someone to do that. He’d figure a way to get them out himself. They also wanted $450 to place our stove back in and to hook up the kitchen faucet. He told them he would do that too.

So as our install day got closer and closer, I got more and more stressed. Why? Because I had never removed countertops, Mike had never removed countertops and, as far as I knew, no one else in either of our families had removed countertops. But not only that, we also had to unhook and pull out our drop-in stove and the kitchen sink and faucet.

I was really stressing y’all! I mean the kind of stressing where you start snapping at people because your stress is just becoming too much to handle. If you could have seen me last Friday, I was in rare form. But I pressed on through, said some prayers, and by 6:00 pm Friday night, I was starting to feel better.

Mike’s dad, mom and his stepfather Allen arrived and the men first tackled the stove. Besides the fact that we found out that the stove is hardwired from the wall into the stove, it came out easily (thank goodness for the 2 electrical engineers in the family). Then they started to unscrew the sink. It had a ton of screws but it seemed to come out pretty easy.

Then came the fun part: the countertops. Our original countertops were laminate. They were basically screwed in from underneath (through the cabinets). We knew they were in three parts since there were two seams. This is when I started to stress again. I can’t quite describe the sound of someone ripping out countertops but it’s a loud sound. I cringed the whole time. I saw them get out a handsaw at one point and that’s when I had to leave the kitchen. Put the worst was when they got to the countertop section by our oven/microwave. For some reason, when they installed the countertops, they had them indent into the cabinet that held the oven/microwave. Who knows why. My guess is that they probably measured the countertop wrong and that was the easiest solution. But the men were worried about destroying the cabinet so they decided to break that section into pieces. Out came the hammer. Have you ever heard a hammer hit a laminate countertop? It’s LOUD!!!!! Over and over again, they pounded. But eventually the men and their tools won.

When it was all said and done, Mike and his dad required some first aid treatment (band-aids) for cuts, and the countertop laid in pieces in our garage. And I stood in disbelief looking at my kitchen that no longer had a sink, stove, or countertops.