The room that's given me the most trouble? The kitchen. Hands-down.
It's the room that's about halfway done.
The room that had no working appliances (except the stove.)
The room where I knew our family would spend the most time.
This is what it looked like BEFORE:
And I wanted to change just about everything about it.
BEFORE:
While I surveyed the mustard yellow sponge painted wall, I envisioned something completely different. Light, cheerful, happy. All in all, I felt like the house was sad. Literally, sad people must've lived here (later confirmed by our neighbors) and I knew we needed something completely the opposite.
Kitchen BEFORE:
The initial plan?
- Replace the flooring
- Change out all light fixtures
- Paint the wall
- Paint the cabinets and trim (we went with a high gloss white...LOVE it!)
- Add crown moulding to the top of the cabinets (side note: I cannot spell that "molding" even though I see it that way sometimes. To me, that conjures visions of squishy tomatoes left on the top shelf of the fridge for too many days, er, weeks...)
- New hardware
- Eventually, we'd like to replace our table with a round one (ideally a flea market find because I want to paint it. And paint every chair a different color.)
This isn't a great shot of our eating area BEFORE, but it's all I have...
So, as you may already know from my whining, we did not expect to have to replace all the appliances right away. It was down farther on the list. But what are you gonna do?
So here is our kitchen AFTER(ish):
The thing I love the most? The floor. I am in LOVE with this floor. It's distressed, I'm not sure you can tell, durable, cleans SO easily...I cannot say enough good things about it.
(That's our new dishwasher over there in the corner.)
I still have LOTS to do in here, including:
- Hang some artwork!
- Hardware on cabinets
- Replace fixtures
- Paint corner round white
- Pick ONE coffee maker to declutter the counter top!
- New counter tops (we've priced them. The price physically hurt me.)
- New stove
- New sink (ours is completely banged up)...I'm dreaming of this one:
Swoon.
Oh, and I need to seriously do something about the top of the fridge. Some of those big dishes and bowls, I'm hoping to get moved...to this space...
Along that back wall. With my dream shelves that I'm trying to convince my dad to make for me. Remember those?
Double swoon.
I have big dreams of filling it with beautiful displays. You know, eventually.
We have a new ceiling fan waiting to be installed over the table. There's not a trace of gold on it (Praise Jesus) and it's really pretty. I know some people are anti-ceiling fan, but if it saves us from turning on the air, it's worth it.
We are also searching for some sort of covering for the sliding glass doors (NOT vertical blinds)...
So that's the kitchen IN PROGRESS. Still much to do, but so much has been done. It's like a blur, all that work we did getting ready to move in.
Definitely a labor of love, but so, so worth it. And now? Yes, I even love the new appliances.
Like I said yesterday...it's starting to feel like home.
