Kitchen Progress

I cant explain how excited I am right now about where our kitchen is at. For the past two weekends we have gone from half finished projects to checking them completely off the list! Since we moved in before this blog was born, I thought I'd share where we started before I share where it's at. I cant say the kitchen will ever be 100% done, but it's so nice when our big projects go from 1000 down to 3. Ok, maybe not 1000 but that's how it has felt!

Are you ready to see how our kitchen looked when we moved in? I mean really, make sure you are. This is rough...








July 2011

What was your first thought? Did the mismatched appliances catch your eye first? Or was it the hideous wallpaper? To this day I don't understand why they put blue carpet in the kitchen. That should be a written rule! I refused to walk on it barefoot and needless to say, that was project numero uno! What the picture doesn't show is the other side of the kitchen. It really is a decent sized kitchen, especially moving from an apartment. However, it was more of an eat in kitchen meaning, the only counter space I had was what you see in the picture above!

After pulling up the disgusting carpet and laying down tile, I got to work on the beautiful (kidding)wallpaper. All I used was off brand fabric softener and sprayed it on. It all came down with ease.

My back was to the cabinets to get the shot above. The kitchen opens up to both the living room and the dining room. After all of the wallpaper was stripped we painted the kitchen cabinets white and the first color we chose for the walls (there were many!) was a green color. I can't remember the name, frankly because I don't want to. We did not like the green but lived with it for awhile!

After surviving cooking Thanksgiving dinner with minimal counter space, I had enough. I needed more room, like yesterday. Using tape is a great way to visualize things before it becomes permanent. We wanted to open the wall up to the living room and create a breakfast bar. The tape along the wall would be more counter space and cabinets. We lacked storage so badly the white you see to the left of that photo was bookshelves turned pantry! Meaning it was open, to everyone who walked in. It was so embarrassing!

Let's fast forward a bit to when the cabinets were installed. We used stock cabinets from Home Depot and making them more durable is one of the projects we'll finish at a later time. However, they work for now! We also had granite countertops installed and to play off of the black appliances we chose black granite for our breakfast bar.

Never mind the missing drawer ;)

Even though the cabinets weren't painted and we hated the green color, the kitchen looked so much better than the very first day we moved in! I mean, are you not in love with that breakfast bar? Knocking that wall out made the whole area feel so much more open. The granite countertop is probably my favorite part, especially on the island. I have storage now!

It's funny looking back at these photos. The final before photo in this post was such a long time ago. The kitchen looks so different to me now and I am excited to share it with you! We still have to paint another coat on the trim, touch up a few areas, and clean before I can share it with you. I'll also share what plans we have left for the kitchen.

Thanks for stopping by!