"Mom"entarily Montana

We are gearing up to remodel our kitchen. This has been a long long process and I am thankful it is coming to a head in the next few weeks as the countdown to demolition begins. I have spent countless hours researching the most cost effective ways to get the kitchen I want on a tight budget and that is why we drove to Montana this past Memorial weekend. Let me explain . . .

I ordered our new custom maple cabinets from a wonderful cabinet company based out of eastern Washington. I have seen the quality of their cabinets firsthand and am very impressed with them and their pricing. In order to save a few additional bucks "we" (meaning I dragged my husband and children into this adventure) decided to save on shipping costs and would pick up the cabinets ourselves. I was very excited for the trip as we planned to make a long weekend of it and spend some time at the parent’s cabin in Idaho. Here’s the layout of planning and events:

1. My FIL offered to pick up the cabinets for us in early June on a return trip from his cabin. Sounded great to us since it would save us the $$$ it costs to drive our vehicles right now with gas at $4.00 a gallon.

2. Followed my FIL’s guidance when he said his neighbors trailer would fit all our cabinets with “no problem” and thus saving us additional $$$ since we wouldn’t have to rent a U-Haul to transport the cabinets home.

3. FIL heads up to cabin last weekend (May 16th) for a quick visit with son #1 and family and wrecks his new van on the way home thus ending our dream of saving $$$ on gas since this is his only vehicle that has the towing capacity needed for the trailer.

4. We buck up our spirits and decide to make an adventure of it and spend the long holiday weekend visiting brother #1 (same as son #1 above) at his home in Missoula, Montana.

5. Terrible gas mileage towing trailer to Montana and our top speed was 65mph. Needless to say it was a long drive.

6. We have a wonderful visit with Montana relatives. I love Montana and often beg and plead with Eric to get a job there so we can move (please please please!).





(Poor Bryce got sick after too many spins on the tire swing)


















7. Show up at cabinet company and upon backing up to their loading dock a few things are brought to our attention; first, employees are forbidden from helping “will call” customers load cabinets and second, this large pile of cabinets is NOT going to fit in the trailer we brought. (NOTE TO SELF: Do not ever listen to FIL again!)

8. We decide to give it a try and started moving the cabinets onto our trailer (mid-way I did call U-Haul to check availability and pricing of a small moving truck “just in case”). Thankfully I am married to the most amazing packer ever (this is well documented by anyone who has ever had him on their move team) and with the help of the warehouse guy (thanks for bending the rules) we were able to get ALL the cabinets loaded onto the trailer. I will add my own little kudo’s for buying more ratchet straps at Costco while we were in Missoula since we needed every one of them and rope would not have done the trick.

9. Slow drive home but not awful. Thankfully it didn’t rain which is amazing especially since we only had one tarp with us and it would not have covered even a fraction of the cabinets. We did lose one strap but we were able to easily fix the situation without any damage or harm to us or the cabinets.