When we bought our home 10 years ago, the first thing we did was gut the kitchen. We had a certain amount of money saved & wanted to stay within that budget and make every penny count. I remember planning out all the details.
We decided to have the cabinets installed before putting in the tile. It didn’t make sense to pay for tile under the cabinets where we’d never see or actually use. Makes sense, right? Wrong. That decision to cut a corner & save some money has definitely cost us much more than it saved us.
We didn’t consider that our dishwasher wouldn’t fit because the counter height goes from the floor, which was 1/2″ lower than the tile. We had to have the counter guy come cut the granite to buy a little room for the dishwasher as well as pop 2 tiles up to be able to get the dishwasher to fit.
Not to mention the 2 times we’ve had to pop & relay the tile since to replace the dishwasher & have a recall item fixed on the dishwasher. Would I change my shortcut if I could go back to those early planning details. Heck yeah!
Sometimes shortcuts backfire. Sometimes we just need to invest up front, do the hard thing. I can’t go back and change that now, but I can learn from it as I move forward. I’m willing to do the hard things, willing to invest time, work, and money. The payoff is well worth it.
