This isn’t my first time at the kitchen renovation rodeo.

The first house I bought in London, Ontario was an Ontario cottage that had only ever had one owner. The good news was that there were no hasty-and-cheap “let’s flip this place” renovations. But it was a time capsule from the late 1920s, including the kitchen at the back of the house. I and a squad of family and friends took on much of the renovation work apart from legally required hiring of electricians and such. I pulled down the old kitchen ceiling one night, by myself, up on a ladder with crowbar a-swinging. We opened up a previously to-the-ceiling wall (not structural!) around a staircase going to the back door, worked out a galley kitchen layout and installed IKEA white Shaker-style cabinets, where it took about the same amount of time to figure out one cabinet as it did to then assemble the rest.

Looking back at that kitchen (good lord, was I ever that young?) I remember most fondly the little swing-down cookbook holder, perfect when you have little counter space. This kitchen was its own room, with a door to shut between kitchen and dining room. At the bottom right of the photo, you can see a bit of the table and chairs; beside that, where the photographer is standing, was a rocking chair and lamp that made a nice mis-en-scene framed by the kitchen doorway, which aligned with the front hall.

Three decades later, when it came to considering a kitchen renovation, my first thought, again, was IKEA. The existing kitchen at house No. 2 used some IKEA pieces and the kitchen renovation there combined IKEA with a few custom bits to create a good space. But this is, I hope, my last kitchen renovation and I wondered if we could possibly afford — gasp — custom cabinetry. My Toronto apartment kitchen was IKEA, too, and all that particle board got pretty chewed up after a decade of use.

We had approached custom builders a couple years ago when we were still trying to make the kitchen work in its existing space at the Stratford house. Every design ended up with a sink in an island and awkward interaction with the room’s bay window. But when I had my flip-room idea, and we were going to be installing a new kitchen from scratch, we decided to take the plunge and engage a local cabinetry company to design and install.

Our contractor (more on him, in a moment) recommended Woodecor and so we connected with Joanne Dente Reynolds, a designer who works for this Stratford company owned by Matt Anderson.

I remember our first meeting, distanced and wearing our masks, at the Woodecor showroom where Joanne showed me the countertops they carry. I disliked them all. Joanne has very expressive eyebrows and they were doing their best to not shoot up through her hairline, that day.

I had lived with chocolate-black cabinetry for a decade and wanted to go back to white Shaker to suit the farmhouse vibe of the house. We decided early on to make the island a focal point, with butcher block matching the wood tone of our teak dining room set and the rest painted an accent colour. The layout mimics the Toronto kitchen, with tweaks, including the addition of a pull-out-drawers pantry cupboard and a narrow built-in bookcase for cooking and gardening books.

The resulting final kitchen design combines our wishes and Joanne’s expertise, with other inspiration and ideas incorporated from design-minded friends and two interior designers we engaged for short consultations — one to confirm my “move the kitchen into the living room” idea would work, and the second for recommendations on pulling together colours throughout the first floor. Some things Joanne and I discussed turned out to be way beyond budget: You can hide your appliances now behind custom cabinetry fronts and we’re doing that for the dishwasher but not for the refrigerator because only the highest-end refrigerators have the cabinet-front option: it kisses five figures for one of these appliances and a camouflage front.

Leading the way to get the room ready for all this cabinetry is our general contractor, Jerry Walsh. Jerry, a licensed electrician who can turn his hand at almost any kind of repair, came recommended to us in 2019 by our realtor, Susan Fox, when we first bought the house. He has been our go-to for a variety of mechanical and structural repairs we’ve done over the past three years and has bailed us out when something goes amiss in that 150-year-old place. We get along very well but, even with that, he was relieved to hear we planned to move out of the house while the renovation was happening. Too often, owners and renovators can really get on each other’s nerves.

As I type this, Jerry and his crew are already at work, tearing down drywall and levelling up the space that will be the kitchen. The final-final cabinetry measurements come next on (we hope) levelled walls, floors and ceiling, and then a Woodecor crew will start building the cabinets while Jerry and team continue with insulating, new drywall, installing new flooring and a host of other tasks.

When this is finally done, Jerry and Joanne will be at the top of the list of those invited for the big reveal open house, assuming we’ll all still be friendly after the inevitable detours and delays on Renovation Road.