...especially if you have two super handy men like my dad and hubby. In two days they have dramatically changed the appearance of our humble kitchen. :) Turned out they had a couple of days off so monday and tuesday they spent they're free time working on our kitchen. I couldnt have been more excited!! To uh... put it mildly. :)
The kitchen is without a doubt the biggest room in our little house, and yet I always felt like it was the room I disliked the most. We really had a limited amount of money to spend on improvements when we bought the house 3 years ago. There was definitely some necessities in the house that needed purchased (carpet, carpet pad, paint, mortar, sheetrock, flooring for the bathroom to name a few) so the kitchen really didnt get changed much. We ended up painting the cabinets white, and purchased new knobs and drawer pulls. I also painted the inside of the cabinets to make them feel a little cleaner. We purchased some wainscoating and chair rail (the mdf variety to save some bucks) There was an old window that had been boarded up in the kitchen, so we had to finish sealing that up, and had to try to match the mortar with the existing.
(since changed the paint color to a more seller friendly neutral) :)
The kitchen definitely changed from its dark depressing before state.
it took SEVERAL coats to cover that red!
eeeewww....
here is how it looked sunday night.
I had already emptied the lower cabinets on the sink side, hence the clutter on the surrounding areas. :) I had detached the doors and scraped the paint off the upper cabinets on the left hand side because we were originally planning to use the existing frames. Here is our plan in a nutshell:
rework kitchen layout
purchase new lower cabinet frames
purchase new upper cabinets
build new coutertop
tile new countertop
Spray cabinet frames black, use cherry doors, drawer faces etc.
Purchase Dentil Crown molding
recover floor with tundra antique stained flooring (from ikea)
(possibly) purchase used or new black oven
plan the ikea grundtal rail system into my kitchen :)
*purchase wood and make shelves
Purchase and hang wainscoating.
We are definitely trying to keep costs down, but I have always heard that kitchens sell houses, and if your going to sink your money somewhere the kitchen is the place to do it. After we are all done I'll give a detailed list of where our money went. :)
We scored some really great cherry bordeux door and drawer faces. My dad is in construction and ended up having a lady sell my dad around 60 miscellaneous doors, drawer faces, corner bread cabinet end panels, etc. All for about 50.00. Apparently she had ordered new cabinets and many of the doors came slightly damaged, bumps in the finish (really not noticeable to me, but I imagine if you were paying for brand new cabinets you would want brand new quality) I think the cabinet place just ended up replacing her entire order. Long story short we ended up with extras for a super great price!
Anyhow, we really had NO idea what we had and a couple weekends ago finally took a day to inventory them all. I grouped them by size, and my mom came over and wrote down measurements for me. Several of the doors were in boxes labeled wrong.
It took quite a few hours, but it was kinda fun not really knowing what to expect out of each box. From the doors we created our kitchen layout.
Both lowes and Home depot sold unfinished oak cabinets. Since we really needed just the frames, this was the best way for us to go. Home depots unfinished cabinets were cheaper, and I later realized why. Lowes' came with shelves!! While Home Depot's didnt.
I was in charge of removing the doors and drawer faces. Will probably put these up on craigslist. You never know what someone may need. I also did the magority of pulling the old flooring up. FORTUNATELY it came up suuuper easy. There were two layers of flooring, the bottom and older layer was square tiles, so the top stuff ripped up in square shapes. Since the glue on the original stuff was suuper old it came up by just pulling. wheew. Could have easily been a three day job.
Another great score for us was my parents having 8 boxes of the tundra flooring left from they're house. Exactly enough to do our kitchen. We had purchased (2 years ago) a few boxes of some discontinued hardwood flooring. It really wasnt the color I wanted (oak) but at .50 cents a sq. foot I could definitely live with it. Thank goodness my dad suggested using the tundra flooring. It went down sooo much faster then the other stuff would have. No messy glue or stinky fumes to deal with. Not to mention I like the looks of it soo much better! The other flooring is yet another item needed to be listed on craigslist.
Oh so clean feeling. It is so nice to have a nice new kitchen floor. I can clean my floor, and it will actually LOOK clean! :) Jaydon sprayed one of the cabinets black to see how it will look.
When we told the crown molding guy at home depot what we were doing he said "very european feeling" guess we will see. Definitely going to splurge on the dentil thick crown molding. I think it will really set it off. Should match the chair rail, and also part of our original front door has dentil molding on it. Similar to this.
Jaydon is planning to stain it cherry. I am kind of thinking it should be black since the frames will be black... BUT he thinks it will look good cherry? He used to have his own painting buisness, so his opinion seems to trump mine in these cases.
This is messy, but you can see how the flooring turned out. Look at all that useable counter space!? I am so excited to have a work area next to the oven, I wont have to walk around that microwave cabinet anymore. I am really excited to use the grundtal rail system to the right of the stove. I think it will give the kitchen a chef feeling, and hopefully set our house apart from any others a buyer may be looking at.
Removing the lower cabinets to the right allows us to scoot the kitchen table over and keeps the "work zone" open feeling. Which is so nice. The uppers are the next big job to tackle. Then the tile, but we wont be doing that until Jaydon finishes spraying the lower cabinets, and I can finally use them! Remodeling is fun, but I get tired of the disorderly state the house has to be in. I have canned foods in the girls' room, and other misc kitchen stuff scattered throughout the house. :)
Wheeew... that was a long winded post! I'll give you guys an update when I have some more news and pictures. Hopefully within the next couple of days. :)
