Nehaveigur

A few years back, before my wife and I had kids and when we still lived in a condo in San Francisco, we asked a real estate agent how much it would be to update our kitchen. $70,000, she said, so we shook our heads and forgot about the idea. At least for a few days, and then I started to make inquiries how much it’d be to update the kitchen by myself. The answer was, around $10,000, but given your lack of experience doing that sort of thing, I was also warned that it was probably going to be bad. I started work over a long weekend by tearing out the old cabinets and removing the kitchen island. I ripped the old avocado-green tiles off the walls. I measured everything and ordered new cabinets and appliances. I remember seeing my father do some of that work when I was a kid, and while I didn’t remember exactly how he did it, knowing that he could do it made me confident I could as well. I watched instructional videos on YouTube, which helped a lot. One weekend, a friend came in with his heavy power tools and we made a lot of progress. I went to the home improvement store several times a week. I connected the sink and the high amperage stove after reading up on how to do this safely. My wife helped me with the new tiles and they turned out perfectly. There were some situations where I thought I was stuck and considered calling a professional, which would have felt like defeat. In each case, after a good night’s sleep and mulling the problem over during my commute I arrived at a workable solution. It was a confidence boost unlike any other, except maybe getting my PhD a few years earlier.

We sold the place a few months later, making a profit that was at least partly due to the new, gleaming kitchen. But the best part was and still is that I am now supremely and probably obnoxiously confident in my DIY skills. I dream of building an office shed from scratch in the backyard, and I believe my kitchen building experience is sufficient to give me the right sense for how much work would be involved. Best of all, I can drop references to “when I built my kitchen” when DIY comes up at parties. It was worth the investment.