.project four: kitchen

I understand that a simple “before and after” shot of our kitchen would suffice for most of you, but this kitchen renovation was such a long time coming. And I have pictures from all along the way. Do you know what it is to live without a decent kitchen for almost 6 months!? How could I not share this craziness with you guys??

This is what the kitchen looked like when we found it (ugly, dirty and really stinky):

During our very first viewing we designed a plan for renovating it. We did this in every house we viewed. We were so excited about the potential in this house, we *had* to buy it!

First, the wall separating the kitchen and living room had to go. That meant taking out the pantry (new pantry here), fridge and all the cabinets on the wall. We had a lot of fun demolishing it back in April.

 

 

it was a mess…….

Then the wall was GONE! Yay!

We were able to sell the old appliances pretty quickly and for a pretty good price on kijiji; but then we moved in and had to live with it like this until we could get new appliances and cabinets, and get the electrical and plumbing all prepared. Could we have planned this better? Probably.

It looked like this for so long:

here it is with some of the new appliances. We finally had a stove in June!!!

Air became an expert electrician through all of this. Completely self-taught, and he did an EXCELLENT job!

…Then we had a baby…

The cabinets finally arrived in August while my parent’s were in town!

…unfortunately, they had given us some wrong sizes and we were missing all kinds of panels and doors… and they were a bit damaged in some places… uck

Our living room looked like this for a while:

Then Air had to replace the plumbing lines with pex instead of the poly butylene… long story.

We finally pulled the rest of the old cabinets out and then we were racing to get a new sink in! We really didn’t want to live without a sink for too long!

This is a weird pic to see:

And here are the first of the new cabinets going in, most importantly a fresh new SINK!

We pulled out the horrible laminate stickers floor tiles and put in some nice strong vinyl ones. They are amazing!

Air and I had an adventure wallpapering this wall at the end of the kitchen one night. It turned out nice:

And another adventure tiling our backsplash another night:

Another six weeks later and we finally had all of the cabinets arrive at the end of September… The cabinet company sent us an installer for free to finish for us since they made so many mistakes! Thank goodness!

(I also convinced them to give us a little discount for all of this trouble)

AND, here is our kitchen as it sits today! Still not quite completed. We haven’t grouted the backsplash or installed the valence or under-cabinet lighting yet, but CLOSE ENOUGH!

appliance garage:

 

hidden garbage cabinet:

 

deep pots and pans drawers in the peninsula:

new fridge:

I can’t believe how big and bright and open it feels in there now. I knew it would be awesome when it was done, but it has exceeded all expectations. It feels so good to be (mostly) done with this project! We love it and we loved doing it! Come over and enjoy it with us sometime!?

So here we are. Before and After:

 

…more to come!