Kitchen Upgrade!

Before I start, I wanted to make a shout out to my brother, Zen, who helped me figure out the hard parts of my kitchen. He helped frame and drywall the pantry and helped put in the cabinets and counters and did all the lighting and outlet wiring installaton. We couldn’t have done it without him. I’m lucky to have such a smart brother!

And thank you to the rest of my family who came down and helped with various projects and especially Kyrra who came down everyday for like two weeks to help me do stuff (so much caulking…) and take care of the kids. I have the best family ever!

And last but not least, my husband did a lot of the really dirty work of crawling under the house and in the ceiling and of course helping with everything else. He’s super awesome (and handsome.)

And now on to the pictures! 🙂

So when I bought my house five years ago, the biggest thing that I loved was the kitchen. It was huge compared to other homes we had looked at and it looked like luxury to me. Here is a picture of it:

Well anyway, over time I realized that the kitchen was REALLY OLD (the hood vent didn’t work, the fan was falling off the ceiling, old chipping laminate countertops and a chipped cast iron sink and there was a thirty year old compactor in there) and so I convinced Andrew to let me rip it up.

And we really ripped it up… We tore out everything except the stove. And now I really do love it. 🙂 I’d say 70% of the work was done by me alone. I dragged cabinets in and out. Ripped them off the wall. Painted. Put in the floor (I had to level it with self-leveler and that was a giant, fun, mess). Mudded the pantry (WORST. THING. EVER.) Cut shelves and supports and trim and drilled and screwed and glued and cleaned. And cleaned. And cleaned. The pantry was the hardest and most expensive thing, but it is SO awesome. However, pretty much everything was really hard and had complications. So worth it though.

 

But anyway, THE KITCHEN.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

 Things I love about my kitchen: My microwave is in the pantry instead of taking up counter space. Pantry. Tall new faucet and deep single basin stainless sink. Pot rack. Island counterspace! No more gap between the stove and the counters! My stick-vac is also in the pantry. And also it’s just brighter and nicer and stuff!

Where did I get things?

Pot rack, all countertops – IKEA
Lights – Home depot and KSL
Cabinets (solid maple!) – used KSL
Cabinet pulls and knobs – Somewhere on Ebay
Everything else – Home depot
Paint – Behr Premium Ultra. I used Subtle Touch for the walls, Powdered Snow for the white cabinets and trim and Silver Hill for the dark cabinets.