Total Kitchen Makeover- Part 1

As I stated in a previous post, my kitchen was not too appealing when we first moved in to our home in 2006. But instead of taking our time and doing a slow reno, I started ripping things out right away. So, of course, I didn’t get a before picture. I did, however, find some “in the process of” pictures when looking through my external hard drive.

Like this one-

taken by one of my lovely children.

You can see we had already painted the base of the cabinets- but not the doors. They were in the garage some where. You can also see the lovely countertops we had. They were the original laminate that were first put into the house when it was built. Except that a previous owner had painted them an off-white; which was peeling and chipped in many places.

But- first things first.

We changed the setup. It used to be like this- (please forgive the crude mock-up)

The cabinets were dark and flat. There was white (dingy) linoleum with little squares that had flowers in the corners. There was carpet in the Dining Room! A very bad combo with kids. There was a half wall behind the stove so you could look into the dining room while cooking.

So, I ripped out the carpet. (no new flooring even picked out yet). Then we took out the desk area next to the fridge and also the cabinets and half wall by the stove. We put plywood down to even out the flooring. We moved the stove electrical outlet to the refrigerator wall. Then we put down 12x12 self-adhesive floor tiles (it’s what our budget allowed) and painted everything white.

Here’s the after setup- (again, I apologize)

Now it is much more open and bright. I keep a wood topped rolling cart between the stove and fridge. It is nice for chopping food up top and storage underneath.

Here is what the cabinet doors looked like before-

I decided to put trim on the doors so they weren’t so plain. I picked the trim that I wanted from the store and decided how far from the edge I wanted all of the pieces to be.  We then primed and painted all the cabinet doors and drawer fronts. This is what it looks like now-

I kept the hinges and just spray-painted them an aged bronze color.

And I got the handles and knobs from Target.

(sorry for the dark pictures. I get the most done when the kiddos are in bed)

It was a long difficult process- but well worth it. Even though I tried to number the cabinet doors so we knew where they went after painting them, we still got them mixed up and had issues with them fitting back in place.

Come back tomorrow for Part 2 to hear about my obsession with bead board and what we did to the countertops. I’ll show pictures of the completed kitchen and dining room.