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.

So far, the kitchen has by far been the biggest and most time-consuming project we've worked on. When we came to look at the house, it was small, dark, and not laid out very well.  We actually all stood there wondering where all the appliances were supposed to go. (Many times, foreclosed houses have no appliances in them when you buy them, or bottom-of-the-line new appliances installed by the bank.)  There was no dishwasher ever installed, but there was also no space to put both an oven and a refrigerator.

I don't have a true "before" picture to share right now. I may be able to track one down to share later, but I do have a lot of in-progress photos.  Almost right away, we knew we needed to tear down some walls. The kitchen and dining room are right beside each other, and before there was just a small doorway between the two.  We've knocked down the wall separating them completely. We are rebuilding part of it as a refrigerator nook, and the other side will be open, with a counter separating the rooms.  This will give us storage space and an extra place to eat and prepare food. It also really opens up the house!

You're seeing it correctly. The cabinets are painted 3 different colors.

At the very beginning, we were thinking about saving the cabinets - obviously they needed a paint job. After seeing the faulty plumbing and the water damage it had caused, we decided to just take it all out.



After putting a few holes in the wall, we decided to just go ahead and also take down the whole wall. (You might notice a pattern emerging here...) In retrospect, I guess we could have actually just patched it and left it, but I am actually glad we took the time to just take it down and replace. The wall was filled with some nasty stuff (rat poop, decades old razors) and obviously was not very strong. I don't think I would have trusted our new cabinets to be held up properly with this wall!



This area had a little L-shaped cabinet configuration. I can't quite remember, but I think they were actually all the same color! Either way, we knew we wanted to open up this space so we started tearing up the wall almost immediately. We did it on a whim and all we had was a mini crowbar, but that did the job! We were just thankful that it was not plaster.


                       

You may be noticing the crazy color scheme here. Dark green in the hallway to the left, dark red cabinet, bright orange kitchen, a lighter, but still bold, green in the dining room to the right

Here you can see a glimpse of the base cabinets and the counter tops. Again, multicolored cabinets and drawers! Who does this?! There was an ugly peg board over the old stove exhaust (see above) so we tore that out to see what was going on. As soon as we saw this brick, our minds started churning with ideas for bringing some kind of exposed brick into the space. You never know what you'll find behind a wall (just hope it's not more rat poop!)





Next up, we started on the floors. Installing and refinishing hardwood floors warrants a whole other post, but I'll give you the summary: it's hard. We only put new hardwoods in the kitchen and part of a bedroom, both of which were small spaces, and they took much longer than we expected. That is probably our biggest lesson during this renovation: it's going to take longer than expected.

The kitchen is in much better shape these days and we have a functional gas stove, dishwasher, over-the-range microwave, new counters, new plumbing, new sink, etc. We are still working on our exposed brick shelf, the back splash, and the bar/peninsula area that is open to the dining room. More kitchen updates to come soon!