Kitchen

I really wish I would have had the energy to blog about this when we were actually doing it but to be honest.. I didn't. However, this is a great way for all you family and friends to see the process! :)

Before we got our sledgehammers out, the kitchen was rather ugly but we was willing to work with what the space had to offer. The cabinet had that "old" look to them that we really liked becuse of the age of the home. Right off the bat we knew that the walls HAD to be painted and the floor and countertops HAD to be changed. We were on a budget so we were going to try and make this work.

Along with changing a few things, we thought a fresh coat of paint on the cabinet, new hardware, new sink and lighting fixture should do the trick.

This my friends, is what we were going to try to work with.

The more we thought about it, the more we realized that it just wasnt going to work. The drawers were old, hard to open and were, how should I put it, completely NASTAY, and the fact that we had a chimney in our pantry wasnt ideal. Sooooooo.. we decided on getting out the sledgehammers and kicking our kitchen's heiny.

The demo process was really easy, you basically just knock everything down and rip everything up! Actually, I (Stephanie) really shouldnt be saying it was easy because I had no part in it... I was the official photographer :)

And this is what our garage looked like afterwards...

After the demo was complete, we were ready to put in our new floor! Off to Lowes we went to pick out a nice neutral tile that would be low maintenance and georgeous :) We decided on a nice chocolate brown tile that was called Mesa and a grout called natural beige. This was our first DIY tile project ever and it is actually pretty easy once you get the hang of it.

First we installed our hardybacker board

then mixed our thin set and we were ready to start laying tile... (for the record, I did help with this one, but I seem to be the only person that remembers to take pictures... geesh!)

And this was the final product of our tile project! Its a little dusty from the grout but looks great!

Tile Complete. Now were were ready for the cabinetry! At this point of the remodel, we were throwing around a few options at what we should use for our cabinetry. Two things we were sure of is that we wanted to have a shaker style cabinet painted white to keep that "old" kitchen look in the "old" home. Our first discussed cabinety option was Lowes. We made our appointment, had our dimensions (well sort of) and sat down with Chuck, an extremely helpful Lowes employee. We ran through the custom options and were floored at what it was going to cost us. The estimate we recieved was somewhere in the ballpark of $4,000 - ouch.

So we quickly shifted gears and switched into stock mode. The cost estimate was half of the custom, but the pieces wouldn't fit exactly right and we were worried about the quality. After a handshake and a thank you, we headed home to see what some of our other options would be.

Ikea - one of my favorite places in the entire world, was option numero two. I love Ikea and go there often, but all these years I sort of skipped the kitchen section which made me forget that they even had them to offer. So one day on my lunch break, again, dimensions in tow. I went to Ikea and sat down at one of their kitchen design center computers and went to work. I was expecting someone (like Chuck) to lead me through the process. Nope, I was on my own. On one hand I felt very cool being able to design my own kitchen and all, but it was also difficult because nothing was really fitting. In order to make everything look streamlined, we would have to get a bunch of extra filler pieces and panels - not something I really want to do, I also felt like a would trust them enough to sit on them - I am a counter sitter - so no.

Option 3 came on a whim. My smart stepdad called me and gave me a number to a custom cabinet maker, a friend of my uncles. He said to give him a call and have him come out and give us a bid. So Mark (the cabinet maker) came out, took measurements and gave us a bid that was only a few hundred dollars over the cost of stock cabinetry at both Lowes and Ikea. SO worth it. SOOOOO worth it. I am so happy we chose custom, for a kitchen, its the best way to go. We opted to paint the cabinet our selves so we could save some dough - dont know if that was worth it. : )

So there they are ready to be beautified! Unfortunately, I dont have any pictures of the painting hanging process, but my mom was amazing during this whole process. I had never painted cabinets before so she came over and got me started - Love you mom! :)

Below you see Roger (my amazingly handy/talented father in law) helping me put up the back splash which in one of my favorite features in the room. We found these large tin looking panels that resemble the old celings you can find in old buildings/houses in the late 1800 early 1900's. They were easy to cut and liquid nail to the wall. The only challenge was to get the designs to match up juuuust right.

And here is the finished product! I love my kitchen. The open cabinets, cafe curtains and cup drawer pulls were all part of my effort to keep the house looking old but with modern amentities. Let me digress for just one moment, only because I need to let everyone know about the Sears Outlet. This is where we got our gorgeous stainless steel fridge and our gas stove for WAY cheaper than we would have at any other appliance store. Its basically a scratch and dent store, but most of the pieces have imperfections on the back or side which really doenst matter. If you are looking for new appliances, I would seriously consider checking this place out. Seriously.

The new recessed lighting is brought to us by david, my elecrical extrodinaire stepbro. He has been helping us rewire our entire home which has the ol' knob and tube wiring. The curtains were made by my awesome stepmom. I was looking for fabric to match my little plate sculpture and these were it, The bright floral pattern brings a lot of color in the neutral kitchen. We added new moulding along the floor and above the cupboards to give it a nice finished look.

How do you think it looks?