Our First House: Kitchen Remodel

My favorite project that we did in our first house was the kitchen, hands down.

It was the biggest transformation.

But it was also the most difficult project.

And the most expensive one too.

But oh, what a difference in made in the whole look of the house!

Here it was in all of its hideousness before we bought it.

I cringe just looking at those pictures.
That was one UGLY kitchen!

We started out by painting the walls a sage-ish green,
removing the ceiling fan (who puts a ceiling fan in the middle of a tiny kitchen!?) and
replaced the door to the garage with a solid-core white one.

Then we tore out the heinous pink and cream linoleum and the taupe carpet

and replaced it with real hardwood that we found in the clearance section at Lowe's.

That made a huge difference!

But it also made the cabinets look even uglier.

In hindsight, we should have torn out the kitchen cabinets first, then replaced the flooring because the new cabinets didn't exactly line up with where the old ones had been on the floor. We ended up having a gap on the floor between the the cabinets and the hardwood flooring.
OR
We should have saved some of the flooring to put in the gap after we replaced the cabinets.
Luckily, it was nothing a little molding couldn't cover up.

After adding in recessed lights to brighten up the kitchen,

the real work began.

If anyone ever tells you it is easy to demo and replace kitchen cabinets,

they're out of their mind!

And be prepared to live in absolute disarray until you can get it all put back together again.

We had already replaced the dishwasher and were planning to replace the fridge too, 

but the stove was brand new when we bought the house. 

However, while we were removing the upper cabinets, 

we dropped one onto our glass-top stove and put a big ol' crack in it.

Don't you just hate when that happens!?

We found out that replacing the glass top would cost us almost as much as it would to just buy a new stove.

I would have preferred stainless steel appliances over white, 

but since the white stove had been new, we had already purchased a new white dishwasher. UUUUGGGHHHH!

So we were stuck with the white.

But I guess the white made the tiny kitchen seem a bit bigger.

The HARDEST part was hanging the upper cabinets.

I had to hold the humongous things up (and keep them level) 

with my scrawny arms while Jacob screwed them in.

We had a very hard time locating the studs to screw them into, 

so our new cabinets ended up with a few more screw holes than needed.

Thank goodness for wood putty!

Then we learned that you can cut out a strip of the drywall and attach a long board to the studs so that you can screw your cabinets into the board instead of trying to drill into the studs through the cabinets.
It will all get hidden once you hang

the cabinets anyways.

That made things MUCH easier!

The base cabinets were much easier to install. 

We didn't have to hold them up in place and 

we finally got the hang of what we were doing.

We ended up going with a laminate for the counters.

We figured it wasn't cost-effective for us to do granite because 

we probably wouldn't see a return on our investment if we spent that much.

We got a nice stone-looking laminate with beveled edges.

It looked really good.

It fooled a lot of people; most thought it was corian.

However, (there's always a however, isn't there?) 

it turned out our walls were not straight,

so the new laminate backsplash had a big gap between it and the wall.

I'm talking big here. 

So big I could stick my whole hand down behind it.

 We never did figure out how to fix that.

It wasn't too noticeable if you put some accessories in front of it :).

I loved that big sink. 

You could wash a (small) dog in it,

a whole cookie sheet,

a baby,

 or a big baking dish.

We're definitely going to have to put one of those in our new house.

I miss that sink.

And here are the after pictures...

 

See that big, new fridge?

It was much bigger than the old, crappy one that we inherited with the house.

So much bigger it blocked the door to the garage (yes we measured first!), 

but once we got it home it just didn't work.

So Jacob and his dad had to cut an alcove into the wall behind the fridge to make it fit.

And that required rewiring and replumbing.

And putting up new drywall.

What a headache!

But it turned out very nicely!

It was A LOT of hard work and 

it took A LOT of time,

but we were SO pleased with the results!

Here's the transformation one more time...