Well, I kind of forgot about the blog for a little while.  It can be hard to remember to take good pictures of the whole process. I do have some progress photos of the "appliance wall" in the kitchen.  We are also starting to work on the peninsula and I have a feeling we are getting close to the finish line! We do have some brief interruptions planned for pool demolition before it gets too hot out, but I think we just have a few days of work left on the kitchen, depending on how hard the crown molding is.

I'm not sure what the top before picture looks like to fresh eyes, but don't let it fool you into thinking it was salvageable.  When we first bought the house, I thought we would save the cabinets. They were short, and I didn't like how there was a foot of empty space between the tops of the cabinets and the ceiling, but I figured we could do something and just paint them. Looking further, it was pretty clear that we were not saving the cabinets. The uppers were actually okay, but the base cabinets had all kinds of water damage. Since it would look pretty weird to mix cabinets, we got rid of them all. We will be re-purposing the double upper cabinet to the right. The plan is to turn it into a little bar cabinet using leftover butcher block in the dining room, so stay tuned!

Please excuse the terrible lighting and quality. These were taken on my phone at various times and we still don't have a ceiling light for the kitchen because I can't make a decision on one.  As you can see, we've come a pretty long way!

We have:

• Gutted the entire kitchen


• Added new oak hardwood flooring - installed, sanded, stained and sealed by ourselves


• Run a new gas line behind current range and installed range + microwave


• Installed dishwasher, sink and faucet


• Installed new Ikea cabinets


• Installed and painted a beadboard backsplash


• Sanded, sealed (with Waterlox) and installed Ikea butcher block counters


• Installed a new ceiling

We still need to:

• Finish open shelf on other side of kitchen (this project has been a beast and warrants its own post)


• Install peninsula (cabinets + countertops) that opens to the dining room - so excited for more counter space!


• Prime and paint ceiling


• Add light fixture


• Add crown molding


• Fill in hole that used to be a window to the left of the counter over the dishwasher


• Install open shelving above the sink


• Extend beadboard around the left side


• Some other trim and baseboard work


• Move refrigerator from laundry room into kitchen


• Paint some existing cabinets that are in a different part of the kitchen and re-install

Whew! We have done most of the heavy lifting, but there are a few details left to go.