Kitchen redo

The kitchen has been our labor of love. It was the thing I hated most about the house and wanted changed asap. I know this sounds bratty, as there was nothing 'wrong' with the kitchen, but you can blame my mom and dad for spoiling me with new, updated kitchens (OK, houses) throughout my childhood! We knew that this was going to be our biggest cost of any of the projects that we had planned for phase 1, so just like with the carpet, we held some of our down payment back so we could afford to make these changes without going into debt or being broke.


Before:

SO MUCH OAK, and laminate, and white, and 'custom' valances and futuristic light fixtures...

First things first - new appliances. Now even though this was extremely important because the previous owners took the fridge with them and pretty much told us the dishwasher was crap, this wasn't something we wanted to spend money on. We just did it 3 years ago in our first house! Not good planning on our part. Luckily my Sister in law Sarah works at Whirlpool and she was nice enough to help us out with a discount!

Next came the paint. We wanted a light grey in here to coordinate with the darker grey of the family room.

Then a very important DeVon Custom Home feature if you have ever been in any of my families previous houses - a cat hole :) That way we can keep the basement door shut, but the cats can still go up and down the stairs to do their business in peace - a win-win.

 

Next was the big undertaking - sanding, priming and painting the 1001 cabinet drawers and doors. We had to do it in stages as there wasn't enough room for them all at once.

 

 

It was at about this time that we found out that I was pregnant - therefore I was able to put down the paint brush! Poor Stephen had to power through the bottom half without me, darn :)  

 

While we were re-doing the cabinets, our friend Chad was also working on our new concrete counter tops. So not only did our kitchen not have doors for a while, it was also missing counters at the same time, there was lots of take out and PB&J during these few weeks.

After the counters were installed and we FINALLY finished the cabinets, the back splash was next.

 

With our friends recommendation, we didn't use mortar, instead we used a peal and stick adhesive to hold the back splash in place. It was a little more expensive than mortar, however with the new counter tops, we wanted to be extra careful that nothing got on them.

After that - we were in the home stretch - we just needed install the hardware (they didn't have any on the cabinets before which left for very greasy corners), change out the sink, install the new faucet, and switch out our light fixtures. Not that there was anything terribly wrong with the others, but the very modern look just didn't fit with the house.

After:

 

 

So much better!!

 

A few things still to do:

1. Put the crown molding back up above the cabinets

2. Window Treatments

3. Replace the floors