Kitchen Reveal

While every room in our house is continually a work-in-progress (or so it seems), the bulk of the kitchen has been completed for some time…oh you know, about a year or so. Life gets the better of me most days, so here are the pictures of our kitchen (finally!).

A reference point, here is our kitchen when we walked through the house.

It was your typical builder’s grade 1990’s kitchen: oak cabinets, basic two basin sink, gooseneck faucet that didn’t quite reach into both sides of the sink, and beige counter tops.

Here’s what you can’t see in the picture:

• the faucet is broken and leaking
• the garbage disposal doesn’t work
• beyond disgusting, rusted out dishwasher in peninsula
• dirty, sticky, pealing floor (rolled laminate covered by peal n’ stick laminate tiles which weren’t applied properly)
• sandpaper like walls
• no appliances (oh wait, you can see that!)

Here’s what we loved about the kitchen:

• biggest floor print of any house/apartment we’d lived in. Oh the cupboard and counter space!
• even more space potential if the peninsula was moved out to the corner and extended toward the fridge area
• sturdy oak cabinets (while out-dated, they were in good shape)
• crown moulding on cabinets (I just love the look, and now we didn’t have to add it!)

To us, it screamed “I have potential!”

Our renovation maximized the potential we saw in the room and our budget so we did most of the work ourselves and kept as many things as possible. (We even tried to salvage the floor, but that failed.)

1. We painted the cabinets ourselves. What a labor of love! It’s a lot of work!
2. We hired out new countertops. We replaced with laminate, Wilson Art’s Carrara Santorini. This is a laminate version of Carrara Marble. So it is white with grey veining through it.
3. We hired a friend to lay the subway tile, but we grouted and sealed it ourselves.
4. We hired out laying of new vinyl flooring (done at the same time as the rest of the flooring in the house).
5. We hired out skim coating the walls in the dining room and kitchen to cover the texture, but we did all the painting ourselves.
6. Bought new appliances.
7. Hired a friend to build a new peninsula.
8. Installed new knobs and pulls ourselves (by ourselves, I mean Dan!).
9. Installed appliances, sink, disposal, and faucet ourselves (again, I mean Dan).

I think that’s all we’ve done. It sure doesn’t sound like much when I type it out. It took us eight months or so though, maybe a year…we aren’t the fastest DIYers!

Ok, enough words, on to the pictures! Here she is today in all her glory!

Sink Area

Stove Area

Refrigerator Area

It doesn’t seem like the same room, does it?

The part I’ve been enjoying most about decorating my kitchen is making little spaces decorated and yet functional:

1. Next to the refrigerator:

2. Our “coffee station:” This is a new one. I want to add cute, matching mugs along with cream and sugar containers, but this is what I had on hand so far. I do like the functionality. It saves cupboard space and makes finding the coffee items easy in the morning.

3. Ok, so this isn’t a decorated space, but does everyone have an overflowing utensil holder? Is it just us? We use them all too…they are often all dirty…maybe we just need to wash our dishes more often…

4. Cute hand soap:

So there you have it! We are loving our new kitchen. We love to cook, so this space gets tons of use everyday!