Kitchen Mini-Renovation

When Steven and I first moved in to our new (to us) home, there were a lot of things that we knew we would want to change right off the bat. However, after making the down payment and paying our first mortgage bill, we both came down with a bad case of "lack of fundage." I had LOADS of ideas for what we could do to update our kitchen (most of which were out of our immediate price range). If it was up to me, we would replace all the cabinets with a beautiful French country white set and change out all the appliances for stainless, but my husband scaled my "high fulalutin" ideas down into a much more modest range. We decided that for now, we would simply paint the cabinets white and wait a while to replace the appliances (although I am constantly itching to get rid of them NOW).   One day, we would also like to put in granite coutertops and continue the wood flooring into the kitchen, but for now we are happpy with the small changes we have made :)

Now, without further adieu, the before and after pictures.

Our kitchen before.  Feaux wood countertops on the same color wood cabinets.  Not ideal.

Notice the super cool hunter green wallpaper with tiny white flowers.  Steven called it our "Magic Eye" room.  Also, not ideal.  We had to get rid of that asap.

First, we took off the cabinet doors and used liquid deglosser to remove the shiny-ness (it actually worked and we didn't have to do one bit of sanding).



After removing the doors and before painting.

After: Our kitchen after a little paint and TLC.  We are very happy with it.  You can't really tell from this pic (because it was a gloomy day), but it is so much brighter in the room than it was before.  Steven also wants to add a little more molding and trim to the back of the bar area.

After: The kitchen from another angle.  We still have to add hardware to the cabinets, but we haven't picked any out yet.  That's the next step.  And eventually, Steven wants to build a banquette on the wall, which will add not only seating but a little storage space :)

This has been a total learning process for both of us.  We are trying to take things one day at a time and pick up advice and tips as we go.  Now that we have completed the mini-reno on the kithen we are working on the flooring in the living room and dining rooms.  We are over halfway finished.  I can't wait to have my living room back and not to have powertools laying around everywhere, but it is really satisfying to do the work yourself.  I am definitely enjoying the process :)

xoxo,
Ashley