The Kitchen Reveal

The kitchen.  The heart of the home.  We worked on this space for well over a year and it's time to show off all our hard work.

I had to dig pretty deep to find some old pictures of the kitchen.  The walls were originally painted an orange-yellow.  Once we moved in, we used some left over paint and changed the wall color to brown.  It stayed that way for 6 years.  The kitchen was not the worst room in the house.  There was plenty of storage space.  The main problem was that it did not function.  The majority of the appliances were slowly breaking down and there was no counter space.

So let's see the before and after photos and then we can talk a little bit about what we did if you are still following along.

Looking into the main part of the kitchen:

Picture taken before we moved in.  Gratuitous picture of my mom.

Picture taken during one of the many phases of trying to make the kitchen work

Our new kitchen

Looking at the door to the back deck and family room:

Picture taken before we moved in.

A few years into owning our house.

Sliding door changed to single door to accommodate refrigerator.

Looking into family room where we removed the column.  Real children playing in background.

Looking at kitchen sink/window and oven/stove corner:

Original double oven feature was nice, but so skinny I couldn't use half my sheets or baking dishes.

We went with a slide in range that still has a double oven feature.

We also went with a counter top/built in microwave.  I love that it is no longer above the stovetop.

Looking into the kitchen from the front door:

Taken before we moved in.

Probably my least favorite fix as now you look at our refrigerator instead of the back deck.

We definitely gutted this kitchen down to the studs in order to change the layout as much as we did.

 We moved the refrigerator across the room and replaced the double sliding door with a single patio door.

We removed the soffits and widened the opening to the dining room.  Found out we had faulty wiring to our oven.  Had to figure out how to vent the new exhaust hood.  And added a lot of additional lighting.  I was told I was crazy by my loving husband and had too many lights.  I still stand by my decision.

 We went with IKEA cabinets and counter tops (quartz).  I love them and highly recommend them.  I was able to put the majority of the cabinetry together myself.  Jesse and I installed them and I would say the only reason it was tricky was because we were going all the way up to the ceiling and our ceiling was not level.  The majority of the other products all came from Home Depot, whether in store or online only.

And lastly I want to thank my husband for all his hard work in making my dream kitchen come true.  He worked so many hours on this project.  I love you.

I shared my project here: Thrifty Decor Chick Best of 2016