our kitchen.

Since it's been 2 years of home-ownership for us now, I thought I would "celebrate" the occasion this week by showing some of the updates we have done to our house. 

Let's start with the kitchen.

The kitchen was the first thing we did.  We knew that we could not even live in this house with the kitchen the way it was, and you are about to see why.  After work and on weekends for a month and a half we would be here every day working on this place.  This kitchen was completely DIY and done on the cheap, but we are happy with how it looks.  Tommy did almost all of it by himself.  I helped with sanding the cabinets and painting them and occasionally as he needed me to help hold something, but he did the bulk of it by himself. 

This is the old kitchen.



The kitchen is small so we knew we needed to brighten it up with lighter cabinets.  We also knew we needed better countertops, flooring, and appliances.

The old details: 
-  Tommy brought down the nasty hood over the stove.  NASTY.  That's all I have to say about that.
-  Next he started disassembling the cabinets.  Doors off, taking out the old countertops, the sink, etc.
-  The 3rd and 4th pictures on the top row show the cabinets and counterspace in more detail.  The knobs really weren't so bad, I suppose, but at the time I really hated them.  They definitely weren't modern.
-  The 5th picture shows how nasty those floors were!  It's disgusting to look at that.  That was the set up of the old kitchen.
-  Bottom row first picture on the left, another view of what the kitchen looked like.
-  This was where the refrigerator originally was.  We felt the need to put in a dishwasher so we had to move the fridge as this was the only place the dishwasher could go.
-  You can see all the different colors this kitchen has been over time.  It was built in 1948 after all.
-  I'm such a dork.  This is me giving a thumbs up as things are going well during our home inspection.  This is the other side of the kitchen- where we moved the fridge to.  I do wish I had kept that light though.  Not in that spot because it hung way too low, but I have several spots where I would have put it.

This is the new kitchen.

The new details: 
-  Painted the upper cabinets white and the lower blue.
-  Dark countertops -- stock countertops from Home Depot, and my amazing husband installed them 100% by himself.  He says he'll never do that again.  I tell him he did a great job.
-  Mounted a microwave above the stove.
-  New sink and faucet.
-  New dishwasher -- first time this house had ever seen a dishwasher.
-  Hung my pots and pans where the fridge used to be to try and conceal that custom fridge-containing cabinetry.  I think it works pretty well.  At least I'm pleased with it.  [Sorry I couldn't clean off the counters before I took that picture.  That picture is from 2 years ago and apparently I didn't feel the need to clean up} 
-  Moved the fridge to the other side of the kitchen to make it feel bigger.
-  Painted everything with a nice, crisp, clean coat of white paint.
-  New hardware on the cabinets.
-  New floors.  The floors alone took the hubs about a week and a half to do because there were 4 layers of old flooring he had to pull up.  You used to have to step up into the kitchen there was so much old floor piled up.  It took him forever, and he lost a lot of blood but he took care of it.  And I love our kitchen floors -- hides dirt so well!


One last before and after look:

Thanks for coming along on my kitchen renovation tour.  It was a lot of hard work but so worth it.  We love our kitchen!