The Kitchen: Before & After

When we bought our house, we had about $7000 that we could put into it and our first and longest project was the kitchen. To give a bit of background, both my husband and I work full-time as well as attend school part-time. Also, my husband really has never built anything that didn't come out of a box with instructions. That said, thank goodness for my father. My dad is an electrician by trade but is also a major diy-er. He built his first home and then his buddy's house and barn. He has done all the work around their house, so he swooped in to help us begin working on ours. Meanwhile, my sister and her husband bought their first home the same month as us, in the next town over, so my dad had his work cut out for him.

When we started our kitchen looked like this:

Trapped in the early 90's with country vibes. Not our contemporary, modern style at all. The layout was all wrong, a tiny sink, horrible lighting, no appliances, a worn dated countertop, and dirty cabinets in terrible condition. These cabinets were pulling apart and hanging from the walls, shelves were bowing, and the ones near the stove were heavily damaged by the heat, moisture and covered in 10 years of grease. Yuck! Not to mention the bright blue on the walls in a high gloss paint that drove my father-in-law (who happens to be a wallpapering/painting contractor) crazy. We had a budget of $4000 and off we went.

We began by pulling down the cabinets and bringing them to the basement. We repaired them, and reenforced them with extra pieces of wood. Then my mom and I scrubbed them down with so much Pinesol, I thought we were scrubbing off the stain. Then we painted them. If you ever get the idea of painting cabinets, no that it is time consuming and meticulous work. Five layers of paint later being very careful not to get specs of dust in the pain or to have any drips they were ready to be rehung and given modern hardware.

Meanwhile, we changed the kitchen from being a J-shape to an L-shape, tossed the sink and broken faucet as well as the old countertop and stove. We also began work on a soffit (aka. the Box) above the upper cabinets that would allow us to put in pot lights. The building of this box was crucial. It needed to be incredibly sturdy as it was supporting the upper cabinets and it had to look good. Luckily, between our two fathers, it turned out great. We picked out a glass tile backsplash at Home Depot which we used to pull from for our colors throughout the home.

We also found a laminate countertop that had hints of the green in it. We bought new hardware for the cabinets and drawers. We picked out a large stainless steel sink with a faucet, not realizing that if it were a half in larger in any direction, it would've been too big for our countertop. After repainting it a beautiful sea glass green, we rehung the cabinets,and installed our countertop, sink and our new stainless appliances (thanks to my in-laws). We also were able to patch the tile floor where the peninsula had stuck out with extra tiles that we found in the basement. My husband and I installed the backsplash ourselves using a new product called Simplemat, which eliminated using goop to adhere the tiles to the wall. We used the staggered glass tiles around most of the kitchen with a vertical stainless tile  behind the stove. We are not great at tiling, but we did pretty well considering we had no idea what we were doing.

Last week, we put on the finishing touches. My father built custom shelves in an empty space next to the pantry cabinet for cutting boards and cookie sheets. He also changed out our plugs and switches, and I added a trim piece at the top of the cabinets to give a more finished look. So here it is... the AFTER.