Wikipedia defines the term “Perfect Storm” as the following:
A perfect storm is an event in which a rare combination of circumstances drastically aggravates the event.
And that is what happened to this lovely 70’s era kitchen, located in Flower Mound, TX. Although I’ve never cared much for plain white cabinetry, made of melamine coated MDF or “particle board” panels, it was functional and period-correct for my vintage cedar shake siding styled 1974 Lake House w/pool. And with my job at the time requiring 95% travel for 8-9 months of each year, kitchen redesign was relatively low on my list of priorities. Call it priorites, cash flow, or maybe even call it procrastination. But whatever you call it, just know that rebuilding my kitchen from scratch had never before even crossed my mind. But then God’s ways are far greater than my own. And every once in awhile He reminds me of that fact in no uncertain terms.
One Friday afternoon I got a message from the Ducati dealer’s service department saying that work on my bike was completed, letting me know that I could pick it up anytime before 5pm. It was around 3pm so I got showered and ready to leave. My friend John picked me up and we headed to the dealership. After getting the bike, we met some friends for dinner then had a few cigars before I headed home at around 11pm.
When I opened the door from my garage going into the house I noticed some water in the front entryway. A few minutes later I realized that the downstairs toilet lever was stuck “open”, which normally would only have caused my water bill to be higher for the month. Strangely though, I had 2″ of water covering my kitchen floor. I’ll cut this short by telling you that the root cause of the flooding was due to an old trick employed by septic system installers. It involves the installer placing a softball into the greywater tank before closing it up. When the tank fills up, the ball floats and follows the water flow to where it is exiting the tank and stops up the exit pipe. Therefore the system backs up and the owner calls the septic company to come vacuum out the tanks. Unfortunately a toilet with a stuck lever just leaves the water running. So when the toilet filled up and overflowed, the kitchen across the hall also filled up.
The people at State Farm are awesome! The cleanup crew arrived at around 4am and began drilling large holes in the sheetrock walls to facilitate the drying process. I was horrified at the damage done. But the State Farm adjuster came out a couple of days later. And after working in his mobile office for almost an hour, he handed me a sizeable estimate and a check to get me started with my rebuild.
I did almost all of the rebuild work myself, with a ton of demolition help from my nephew Chase Deyo and my adopted nephew Connor Hennessy. I sourced the granite, sink, and flooring through my friend John, who owns Dynamic Stone, in Dallas, TX. John also connected me with one of his customer companies from whom I sourced the stone for the backsplash. The new range was obtained from Lowes and the Viking dishwasher was a showroom demo unit purchased “as new” with factory warranty, found on Craigslist for around 50% of retail. My total cost (wholesale) for the rebuild –including full flooring removal/replacement, including baseboards/molding for the entire downstairs living room, kitchen, bath and entryway- was around $20k. My State Farm homeowners policy paid around 70-75% of the cost and I shouldered the remainder and provided my own blood, sweat and tears. When I sold the house in 2015, the new kitchen & downstairs flooring and 1/2 bath re-do was estimated to have added an additional $40k to the value of the home.
This photo is the finished kitchen rebuild.
