Another Check Mark on the To-Do List
I hope everyone is sitting down because I would like to announce that Mr. vB and I have actually, wait for it…FINISHED A PROJECT! The Kitchen has officially been checked off the To-Do List. {If the mood strikes us we might still upgrade our dishwasher and change up the bar top, but for now we are all good!}
But before I debut our new digs, you know I gotta show you were it all started. And just to warn you- this is gonna be a long post. I took us just over 6 months to get it all done. That is ALOT of projects/photos to recap!
Just like most things in this house, Mr.vB had already renovated this kitchen once when he originally moved in. Here is what it looked like back in Jan ‘05.
This is the few from the hall looking into the kitchen and dining room.
And here is looking from the back pantry room into the kitchen. {nice isn’t it?!}
The original plan entailed opening the wall up between the kitchen and dining room and also rearranging the cabinet layout.
Here is the kitchen right before we started taking down the cabinets. The upper cabinets did have doors, but Mr. vB was working too fast. By the time I grabbed the camera, half of the doors were already down.
We were never fans of the original cabinet doors as they were very 80’s-ish with the wood accents. Our appliances (which came with the house) also bugged us as they were mismatched- Black Stove, White Hood, White Fridge and Silver/black dishwasher.
We started by rearranging our existing cabinets. Mr. vB took down all the existing cabinets..
And then put them back up in the new layout.
We also added floating shelves beneath. Instead of buying them, Mr. vB attached pieces of re-bar into the brick wall. Then he built a box that would slide around the pieces of metal and become our shelf.
Once the new layout was in place, we purchased the new fridge, stove and exhaust hood. To properly exhaust the hood to the outside, it required drilling a BIG MESSY HOLE in the brick wall. We sealed off the kitchen to hopefully contain the mess.
A few weekends later we decided we had to do something about the back splash. Previously it had been painted to buy us some time, but we had always envisioned it in tile. We ended up having some left over tile and grout from the bathroom project, so we decided it was time to take the plunge.
It was actually quite easy and we had that part done in a weekend.
Then month by month we purchased the new cabinet doors and hardware. {As you saw, we reused the existing cabinet boxes as they were in pretty good shape, and once the new doors were on you wouldn’t be able to tell anyways!}
I love how the new doors and hardware make the counter tops look so much better! I was never a fan of the Formica {especially with the old doors} but now they look so much richer. I am still thinking about removing the existing Formica bar top and replacing it with a granite slab, but we’ll see.
Another new addition was the hardwood floors. You might remember me mentioning that we discovered these the week Mr. vB was on vacation. What a difference they make to this room!! We were never fans of the bright orange tile, but had no clue such a gem was hiding under it. We might have ripped them up sooner had we have known!
Our final tasks were to add base board and shoe molding, touch up paint, caulk, and clean!!
So one more before shot and then the grand unveiling..
Before
And AFTER!
Dotty and Flo even made it down for the photo shoot!
There you have it! Was it worth the 6 month wait??
