Things have been a little quiet on the blog concerning our kitchen renovation but that doesn’t mean it has been moving forward or that we haven’t been working on it.

You may remember from this post that we had already bought our Whirlpool microwave but still needed to install it.  Well consider it done!  Thanks to Michael Luke.

 Yep.  He removed our existing and installed our new one.  And we are really thrilled to have it… especially since we scored such a great deal on it. We are only out of pocket $50 bucks for our new microwave with an MRSP of $209. That’s a savings of $159!

How did we do this?  A couple of months ago we were at Lowe’s looking at counters, I decided to take a little bathroom break and passed by the returned and out of box section where a black microwave with a $50 price tag caught my eye.  By caught I mean, I stopped walking instantly, showed it to ML, and then was afraid to leave it in fear that someone else might be looking for the same black microwave!

We inspected it and except for a few minor problems couldn’t find anything wrong with it.  Michael Luke called an employee over to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong with it that we might have missed.  Nope.  Just a returned microwave marked down to $50.

It didn’t take us long at all to decided that this was the guy for our kitchen.  So we loaded him up and headed home.

We weren’t able to install the microwave immediately because it didn’t come with the mounting hardware.  Michael Luke called around to a couple of stores and finally found one that had some extra mounting hardware on hand that they gave us for free!

After that we were in business and ready to install the microwave.

First the old one came out.

New hardware went up.

Then our new microwave was installed.

It fits and works great and a plus is that the inside is larger than our previous one which allows for our less than small square dinner plates to rotate completely.  Something that didn’t happen in our old microwave.

The scratches are still there but are hardly noticeable… especially from a distance.   And we figure with a little elbow grease we can get most of them out of there.

Remember, our goal is to renovate this kitchen on a minimal budget with a maximum wow factor for resale in a few years.  So, we think a few scratches on our “nicer than we would have originally purchased microwave” really won’t matter in the grand scheme of things.  They don’t show up in pictures or while standing in the room until you are right up on the microwave.  I don’t think something that minuscule will keep someone from buying the house.

Michael Luke and I have also decided to match dollar for dollar what we spend on renovating the kitchen to pay down our current mortgage.  We have hopes of paying that baby off way sooner than the the thirty years the bank is giving us to pay it off.  The more we pay down now the more we will have for a down payment on our next house.

So where does this microwave leave us with our We Can Beat That estimates?

Operation Bring Sunshine to the Kitchen

(Estimated Pricing) Actual Amount Spent

• new countertops– ($600 counters, $427 labor installation)
• paint upper and lower cabinets – ($30)
• under cabinet lighting– ($70)
• new refrigerator– ($1,100)
  
• new above range microwave oven-($150) $50 (actual cost will be lower once we sell the existing microwave currently on Craigslist.
• paint walls– ($30)
• tile backsplash– ($30 tile, $30 supplies)
• add cut out to pantry door– ($20)
• clean grout in tile floor– (10)
• new hardware for cabinet doors and drawers– ($100)
• replace ceiling fan and light– ($160)

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