The Kitchen

As soon as I saw the photos posted on the realtors website of our home I loved it! I absolutely loved everything about it, well almost everything! The one hangup was that I couldn't stand the look of the kitchen! I love how huge it is, I love the layout, I love the appliances, skylites, hardwoods and especially the vaulted ceilings....so what does that leave for me to despise? The cabinets. I wouldn't say they are oak- but they may have been at one time until they put some sort of a gray colored wash on them. This just left them looking dated and dirty. I decided almost immediately that if we were going to live here I would love to do something to change them. I began constantly watching HGTV looking for any tips on how to refinish cabinets where they turn out looking nice, not screaming that they were painted! Took a while but after quite a number of chats with different painters, dozens of television shows and several how-to books, I made my plan. Here is a photo of the kitchen in all its original glory. :)

Kitchen Before:

Such a great space right? I sure saw a lot of potential! And perhaps a lot of work too. :) First thing I started with were the cabinets. I refused to unload all of our clean dishes and food into them until they were cleaned up. They were so dirty, sticky and in no way ready to be used. You can see below the tacky gross blue contact paper Lola is sitting on which lined (and had to be removed) all the cabinets and also just the poor shape all the shelves were in.

So I started by removing all the doors and drawers from all of the cabinetry and then got to work! This kitchen was how Lola & I spent the entire month of August of last year... definitely took longer than I anticipated but I really wanted it to turn out nice. After removing all the cabinets I went to town sanding...let me just say how much I hate sanding- but I was told many times over sanding is the key to having the paint adhere properly and to achieve the lasting quality I wanted.

Such a big project right? During one of our million trips to Home Depot, (where I still think they should give me my own parking spot) William and I both saw a kitchen that we really liked. Do you know how expensive kitchens are? Rediculous! I was already well into the kitchen makeover when we started brainstorming about changing out some of the cabinet door fronts with glass.... being that William has easy access to glass we decided to go for it! We also replaced all the gross shelving with beautiful new glass shelves.

Our Home Depot glass cabinet inspiration:

Looks pretty right? We liked this glass as it is slightly obscured. I have plenty of pretty dishes to display behind it so why not go for it? After a good base coat of primer and two coats of paint on each side the cabinets were FINALLY finished!

Here are some of the cabinets all painted and put back together! Now it was time to choose hardware.

Hardware we liked and chose:

Next up was the painting of the walls! We decided to go with blue in the kitchen. As much as I LOVED my berry colored kitchen in our last home, you've seen this home already has a lot of pink. :) My Mom actually picked out this beautiful cheery blue color, thanks Mom!

Kitchen painted blue!

Here is William cutting the tippy top that I was just way too scared to do myself....once I get that high on a ladder my knees start shaking so bad I can no longer cut a straight line. :) Aren't the flowers gorgeous? They just looked so pretty with the blue walls!

Ready to see the final pictures of everything put back together thus far? Here they are! :)

Before:

After:

Island before:

After:

Wall of cabinetry before:

After:

We are still wanting to add the lighting in the glass cabinets! Just a future project when we run into some money :)

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Lastly, here is a few frames I bought and hung with ribbon. I have always wanted some big black and white photos of Lola hanging and I love how they turned out! :)

Thats it for the kitchen! :) Hope you enjoyed it!