Kitchen Remodel

When we bought our house 3 years ago I was so excited because I knew our kitchen needed a complete remodel and my wheels started spinning before we even put an offer on the house!  Well it has taken about two years of weekends...but it is FINISHED!

Can I just say that one more time?  It's Finished!

I'd like to share our journey of making our kitchen into a place we love, but first I'll show you the "before" picture...it wasn't much to look at and even less to work in!

It was tiny, hardly any storage space and very dated...1970's anyone?

I knew there was something that we could do to help the small space...well behind this set of cabinets happened to be a den...

And a beautiful bay window.

So we did what any sane person would do...knocked out the wall.  And thus began our journey!

That wall happened to be a load-bearing wall so we had to build two false walls on either side of the wall we were taking down and put a beam in, but we had some great little helpers!

A little sheetrock to cover the beam and we were ready to rip out flooring and put new cabinet in.  My hubby and I built the new ones and he painted them with his airless spray gun.

The existing cabinets were pretty beat up, but we were able to reuse and fix most of them because they were solid wood.  We built an additional 16 cabinets and drawers, but sanded and rearranged the existing ones.

These wall cabinets looked awkward to me so one day while my hubby was at work I took a Japanese hand saw to the face of the cabinet and cut it out.  My sweet forgiving hubby came home and built the shelves for me and fixed the whole thing to look like this:

I love to display my tea set!

The corner glass was the dated 1970's diamond pattern, so I carefully took it out and brought it to our local glass shop and they cut us a new clear piece for under $15.  

Tiling is something that I love to do.  This medallion behind our stove was made from lots of little tiles that my husband painstakingly cut every time I marked one of them!

It was a lot of work, but after sealing it and using epoxy grout...we loved how it looked.

We also used standard 4x4 travertine tiles for the backsplash, which are very inexpensive, but can be cut in different ways to make and interesting backsplash.  Our total cost was about $100.

We had to put in all new appliances.  Jeff built an inset spice cabinet for easy access to seasonings while I'm cooking on the stove.  He also put in this nice range hood and ducted it to the outdoors and concealed it by extending the cabinets to the ceiling:

I love having the cabinets to the ceiling...makes the room feel taller, and I don't have to dust up there!

I've always wanted a cast iron farmer's sink...and here it is.  Jeff custom built the cabinet for it and made a roll-out concealed trash can just left of the sink.  

Can I just say that my hubby is awesome?  I had the idea to use the space above the fridge for storing large pans and cookie sheets...and he came up with this and built it from scratch.  Sometimes I think he worries when he hears me say, "Hon...I have a great idea."

Remember that wall we took out?  This is what it looks like now after adding a peninsula/island with stool seating.  The granite counter tops are something that I looked for months for.  We live in an area where there are quite a few granite yards.  I was able to find enough and exact matches of black galaxy granite from scraps to be able to do our counter for under $1000.  

Jeff also built an awesome work station in our breakfast nook area:

I love having tons of extra storage and the perfect work space for baking, sewing, or whatever!

Our original floor was three layers of this stellar linoleum...all of which had to be taken up.  I got a screaming deal on this tile at Lowes (they were discontinuing the color) and we were able to put it down ourselves for under $1.00 a sq ft!  Not for the faint of heart, but after we got the floor level, put the backerboard down...it was only a month of weekends laying tiles...might have had something to do with my being 6-months pregnant at the time!

Directly across from the wall we opened up is our dining room.  It started out with the same brick linoleum and plain white wall with everything very dated.  

We've finished that as well, and we love having a dining room, but right now it's doubling as our homeschool room!

I love spending time in our kitchen now! Over the two years that we worked on it we were really able to transform it into something we love...and also stay within our budget.  We did everything for under $8000 including buying all the appliances.  

Thanks for sharing our adventure with us!

Busy Busy

Well we surely have been busy...especially my husband!  We've been in our home for almost three weeks, and in that time we've started lots of projects (notice I didn't say finish:)  One of the first things our son helped us change was the dangerous stair railing at the top of our staircase. He promptly demonstrated that he could get through it, which led to it being taken down that evening.

We started looking at ideas to remedy the large gaps and we found a fun idea:

So Jeff ran over to Lowes and got lumber and pretty quickly this is now what sits in its place!

It still needs finished and the detail work done on it, but it's great to have a functional barrier!

The other projects we've done or started is replacing a non-functioning green 1970's toilet...

 demolishing part of the kitchen wall ( the new refrigerator wouldn't fit through any doorway to the kitchen--my bad--thankfully we're taking that wall out anyway.)  The delivery guys thought it was rather funny that I took out the doorway and part of the wall so they could get the fridge in place!  

This is gone...and in its place: 

Jeff also replace the nasty dishwasher with a beautiful stainless one that washes dishes beautifully...like I said he's been busy!

Also, the stairs to our basement had no ballasts...not a good thing with two little kids...a 7 foot fall onto concrete needed to be prevented before they could play down here.  

I'm hoping to paint them today so I'll post pictures soon.  

We've ordered carpet and hope to get it in the living room in the next two weeks...and I have lots of paint samples so we can pick just the right color!

I've been unpacking like crazy and redoing the pantry (I'm not a huge fan of particleboard and green ivy contact paper) so I'm doing it in black and white.  

And we've picked out tile for the kitchen floor...and come to find out there is 3 layers on linoleum that we're going to have to take up before we can tile! 

You can look a few pictures back to see the brick looking flooring that is in the kitchen right now:) 

It's fun to get to improve so many things on our house...and I'm very fortunate to have a very handy hubby!  Hopefully I'll be able to post some more finished photos soon!