The Kitchen

The kitchen is where we spend a lot of our time.  We gather there 3 times a day and the kitchen gathers our messes all day long.  Because we knew this when we bought the home and because the kitchen is teeny tiny we decided to make the kitchen as light and airy as possible.  We also had to consider that although we wanted our house to be comfortable and aesthetically pleasing we didn't want to dump a ton of money into the home.  We plan to rent this house out whenever it is that we buy our next home.  These pictures aren't the greatest but you can see what I mean right?

So the first step in our kitchen redo was to take all the doors off of the cabinets.  They are actually a really great quality wood so in the interest of saving as much mulah as possible we stripped them down sanded them primed and painted them.  More on that another time.

The next step was to take all of the wallpaper down.  Well almost all of it.  I got so tired of doing it that I left a section of wallpaper up behind the fridge.  It may or may not still be there.  We also removed all 4 layers of vinyl flooring.  Yep 4.  That's where brothers come in handy.  It's also where I stood back and said "way to go, its looking great".   I'm sure they appreciated my cheering.  We took out the counters, back splash and the sink and decided to replace all of the wiring and plumbing in the kitchen since everything else was torn apart. That included taking down the light fixtures and adding canned lighting in half of the kitchen. Here's what it looked like partway into the project.

See that little light bulb up at the top?  Now it's gone, no more, hasta la vista!  Instead we now have this.

It takes up no visual space in the room which was a real plus considering how small the kitchen is.  

I'll go into all the details another time but here's the list of things we did to put it all back together:

• New tile floors
• Tile back splash
• Granite Counter tops
• Painted cabinets and wood trim and added new hardware
• Skim coated the walls with plaster and textured the ceiling
• Painted the walls and ceiling
• New lighting under the cabinets and on the ceiling
• New fixtures for the sink

We decided to keep our retro stove/oven and don't plan on replacing it until it gives up.  Here's the after pics:

We think its quite a change and love how much brighter and bigger the space feels now that it has changed.  I would say that the thing that changed the appearance of the room the most drastically was the cabinets.  It made a huge difference in how the room reads.  Dank and dark previously, light and bright now.  On another note, the tile on the floor and walls unintentionally ended up being the same color.  It has worked for the most part but sometimes we feel like it looks a little drab.  I'm considering painting the walls the same white that's on the ceiling and cabinets or maybe a soft blue?  I cant decide.  What do you think?  The light fixture in the picture above is really more of a place holder until we found something that we really liked.  Maybe something like this but in more of a drum shape?  I'm thinking possible DIY project.  

Because we did most of the legwork and installation/painting ourselves on this project we spent a fraction of what we would have otherwise spent getting the place in tip-top shape.  So anywho there it is.  Part of our main floor makeover.  Check back later for more reveals!

Kirsten