How Far We've Come... Kitchen!

Ohhh the kitchen.. I love seeing this transformation! It brings back so many good memories and makes me wish I had another HUGE project I could dive into. I have so many milestone pictures that I did not include what it looked like when we first moved in, but you can see those here. For the purposes of this post, the pictures start at the point just before we started knocking down walls. (In other words, we had already painted the walls and the cabinets and had gotten the new appliances).

Here we go!

I really did love this little chalkboard wall and little nook...

The galley kitchen however? No thank you. I always felt like I was in a cave!

The fridge stuck out SO FAR when it was in this spot. It was constantly in the way!

When we first started the demolition, it wasn't necessarily planned... We KNEW we were going to renovate the kitchen at some point in the near future, but one Saturday we just couldn't take it anymore and just decided to start opening up the walls! I love the wallpaper we found behind the cabinets.

You don't even want to KNOW how hard I cried when we saw this huge pipe in the wall. All I could think about was how freaking expensive it would be to move it (and it was!)

Being able to see the light shine through the open was AMAZING! Even with so many beams still up and all of the mess, it was a heavenly sight!

Living in a construction zone = no fun. I was always buying flowers to try to make it look a LITTLE more pleasant.

We did all of the demolition, framing, and drywalling work ourselves (with the help of an amazing 80-year old city inspector who would spend hours a day at our house basically telling us step by step what to do! Thank you Gil!) We hired out the plumbing, electrical, and flooring. Here is a picture of what the room looks like with the plumbing complete. Goodbye huge pipe!

The WORST part of the whole renovation was removing the floors. You wouldn't think it would be that bad, but there were FIVE LAYERS of flooring (If you scroll up again, you can see how much the floor height varied between the Pergo flooring and wood floors - like a solid two inches!) , and I think they used a gallon of super glue and 100 nails to lay each layer. It was brutal. It was backbreaking work, it was messy, it was miserable. It was so hard that we ALMOST decided to lay the new wood flooring above the bottom layer of linoleum , but figured we'd regret it later and pushed through to expose the subfloor.

Here is a shot of what it looked like with the the electrical work complete and the floors stripped down to the subfloor.

Here is a shot with the new flooring laid but not stained. Love that it is completely level. Definitely worth all of the extra work to have a seamless transition to the dining room!

Stained floors!! Woo hoo!

And here it is with the baseboard trim installed.

The only other major construction work to do was the built-ins for the fridge.

 

Love all of the storage!

 

 

The goal for 2015 is to finally get new counters and a new farmhouse kitchen sink. Still debating the marble, but thinking I will take the plunge and just do it. Nothing in our house is perfect anyway, so if the marble gets a little beat up it will just match everything else in the house. It will have "character." My father-in-law's mother who is from Italy told me that it was a GOOD thing in Italy if your marble counters were beat up because it meant you were a good cook and you had a happy home. I love that!

 



Ok, I am not a good cook, but the happy home part definitely rings true :)

Tomorrow's transformation - the family room!

Kitchen Built-Ins are COMPLETE!

It took a year, but the kitchen built-ins are COMPLETE!

I have to say, they turned out way better than I ever could have envisioned! Instead of just being a random part of the kitchen, they have become one of the key focal features of our home.  Overall I love the mix of open and closed storage in this room. It makes it EXTREMELY functional and yet visually interesting at the same time. I think my favorite part is the incorporation of the baskets!

A random fact for you is that our original plan did not include the pantry on the left, we were just going to frame around the fridge.  It was a last minute idea by Evan to add the pantry there, and I am SO GLAD he thought of it! It houses all of our cereal, spices, snacks, and baby supplies. I don't know where we would put that stuff otherwise! (Good job Evan!)

And yes, my husband did build all of this himself!

It is hard to believe that this is what that same area looked like when we moved in: 

It is a very good reminder for me to think of how far we've come, instead of just thinking about all that is left to do!

Progress on the Kitchen Built-Ins - Cabinet Doors!

If you may recall, we've had the framing of the built-ins in our kitchen done for awhile (see here), but a few weeks ago we installed two of the three cabinet doors. WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!! It is so nice to hide all the food/spices/cereal boxes/etc. that reside in this pantry. It makes the room feel 1000x cleaner and bigger. I can't stop looking at it.

And I would like to brag for a second that my sweet husband made these cabinet doors HIMSELF!! Because we couldn't find doors that matched the other cabinet doors perfectly and because we wanted very specific sizes,  we decided that instead of breaking the bank to have someone custom make them for us, we would invest in a router and buy the supplies we need and give it a shot ourselves (Errrr, himself. I had no participation!)

The last door will start underneath the microwave and down to the floor. Ahh so excited! :)

Then all that will be left to do in the kitchen will be the countertops! I'm leaning towards quartz that looks like marble, so we will have both the look and durability that we want. I tried ordering samples of Misty Carrera and London Gray from Caeserstone but they were completely sold out, and no place around us carries them either! (Go figure, I think I find something I want after a year of looking and can't get a sample! Blah!)

One step at a time!! If there is one thing I've learned in renovating this house, it is that good things (and/or good prices!) are always worth the wait!

Custom Kitchen Built-Ins = 75% Done!

We've been working on built-ins in our kitchen for the last couple of months, and we are SO CLOSE to being done! At this point, we need a cabinet door along the pantry to the left of the fridge, and another door on the 2-cabinets directly below the microwave. (The rest will be open display) We also still need to prime and paint the new crown molding and repaint the wall below the molding in gray. Finally, we have to finish the baseboards and door frames... Ok, so maybe we more like 60% done! Still though, I am loving the progress! Having the extra storage is pretty much life changing (You would feel that way as well if you had food fall out of the small double cabinets above of the dishwasher every time you opened the doors!)

 

I also decided I do not like having the trash can in the pantry. It's a pain (husbands idea, sorry Evan!) so we are going to put more shelves in there for even more storage.

Next on the list is new countertops (still debating the marble) and and a farmhouse sink. I also want new window coverings, but not 100% sure which direction I would like to go on these.

 

As a reminder, here is what it looked like right before we started the built-ins:

 

 

 

Parade of Homes - House #2 - Favorite Kitchen!

I took so many pictures of this kitchen, that I'm devoting a whole entire post just to this space.

It is beautiful! I don't even think the pictures do it justice (especially because I freaking had my camera on manual focus instead of auto focus and didn't notice it right away, ugh - sorry!)

I really love the countertops. They are "Alpine White" granite. I think this may be what I want to do in my kitchen! Slightly more durable than marble but same overall impact. Even my dad approved :)

What do you think?

This barn door kills me. I LOVE it!

I will share the rest of this house with you in my next post! Stay tuned!

A little bit of spring...

It reached almost 70-degrees here this weekend.. A bit early, but I definitely loved it :)

It inspired me to bring some touches of spring into my kitchen in the form of a new lemon candle, lemon soaps, yellow striped dishtowels, and some tulips.