I had a deadline (Passover Seder) so even without a lot of details done, I had to get the boxes out of the living room and clean everything. I'm still backfilling shelf liners, while the last bits of the kitchen get finished. It took about a month of working at least a couple hours a day to get everything washed (by hand--DW problem) and in. I had everything pretty well planned out, so most things went in pretty well. I'm still rearranging the uppers because I got an extra shelf made and those were just installed. The pantry is doing pretty well, but now that I've been using it and have everything grouped right, it probably needs a going over. I bought some pots and stuff at a big sale so rearranged my bakeware and pot drawers. Those are minor things, really.

The kitchen overall works the way I thought it would and better. Zone organization works extremely well except for one thing. I use table knives a lot in baking. Even without really baking anything yet, I had to get a knife from across the room. Then found a couple of nice ones on open stock sale. I'm the only one who knows where stuff goes, but it's great having a place to know where stuff goes!

Congrats on getting to this point!

firsthouse,
I think you and I are near the same stage. I am looking forward to seeing more photos of your lovely kitchen!

I am only partially in the kitchen. The walkin pantry still needs to be completed, so we are still going up and down the stairs to gather foodstuffs. I did not create any exact plan for equipment placement. I have approximate ideas and I know I will rearrange things again once everything is back in the kitchen (hopefully in a couple of more weeks.)

I moved in in stages, although in the beginning I had thought I would have a marathon move and do it all in one go. That proved way to tiring, and really not necessary. All my stuff was stored in the basement throughout the reno. First, I brought up the stuff I needed to function - pots, pans, utensils etc - ran them through my new DW, so they'd be clean. Then I lined the shelves, unloaded all the nice clean stuff into my new cabs. And I stocked the pantry. Then slowly, as I needed stuff, I carried it upstairs, put through the DW, and stacked it all in the cabs. But, when the BIG snowstorm in February closed down work etc. I used that time at home to finish moving in :)

Actually, I'm glad I did it in stages, as I ended up moving some stuff to other locations from the original plan. I had time to see how the new kitchen functioned, and, I got the idea for a baking zone right here on GW! So it paid off taking it slowly. Good luck with your move-in.

It took me a few months to get all the boxes out of the garage and either unpacked, tossed, donated, or moved elsewhere. Kitchen was finished in August, and my goal was to be able to pull the car back in the garage before the snow - which I did. I did not end up putting everything where I thought I would. I completely switched cabinets for my pots and pans because the one I thought I was going to use was not big enough.

I have to say that it felt right from the beginning. I'm surprised at how little I opened the wrong cabinet for something - probably less than 6x so far, and 5 of those was opening the "trash" cabinet (under the sink) when I meant to use the new pull out.

Lynne

I know so many of you here are HUGE planners so I use you as my litmus test for how long it might possibly take me to "get it right" with regard to putting it all away. I have dreams of the perfect spice drawer (newbies search the archives for a huge bunch of great examples), I want the pantry to perform admirably, and my drawers to be useful!!!

The movers come Monday to bring everything that was put in storage 16 months ago.....I can't even remember what I owned!

Last question: did you use the Cushy shelf liners or some reasonable facsimile thereof?