A Balancing Act

Can I have another cookie?

We are always battling want vs. need in our house.  I want everything to be finished right now - but we need to be smart and save money to meet our goals.  I want a finished kitchen by the end of the year - but we need to be smart and save money to meet our goals...yeah that one gets used a lot.  Everything we do or buy gets weighed against "Does this work with our goals?  If not, can I change something else to make it work?  Is it worth it?"  It gets very tiring, but is worth the extra work because it keeps us on course.  Do I sometimes say "Just get it, we'll figure it out" or "I really want it to be this way" even when it is definitely the more expensive way to go?  Yep - sometimes the goal has to be flexible to keep us happy. 

One of those times was when we were deciding whether to buy or build our remaining kitchen cabinets.  We still need two islands, a few upper cabinets and a 10x10' pantry wall - which means about 20 cabinets in all.  Since we are hoping to start working in the kitchen around June we definitely needed to start planning.

Here are our two options...
 
       1.  Build all of the cabinets ourselves.  This would include designing, cutting, routering, sanding, building, painting and installing them.  Based on our office desk experience - it would take around 6 months for us to build all of the cabinets (remember we only have the weekends to get things done).  However, it would cost roughly 1/4 the amount of buying them.

          2.  Buy the same cabinets we already have.  This would include designing, shopping, building (they come flat and you screw them together), painting, and installing them.  It will cost 4 times the amount of building them, but would take less than a month to complete them.

So this time it is really time vs. money.  If we save time, we might actually get more done this year than planned (and we wont be so tired) - if we save money, we are that much closer to our goal.  After talking it over several times, we decided that our time was more valuable to us.  We have saved a lot of money over the last 3 years by doing everything ourselves, but sometimes it's worth it to save time.

Which means now I get to design the rest of my kitchen!!  I am so excited, but nervous because I have to get it right the first time...