July 28, 2013

New Kitchen

So I don't really blog anymore, it just became like a chore and not so much fun so I quit.  However, I figured this would be the best forum to view our kitchen renovation. We began this journey on 6/1/13 and officially finished today 7/28/13.

So let's start with a few before's so everyone can understand the drastic change.
So there you have it folks. That was my kitchen once we cleaned everything out. It was very green, and pretty dark. I would be lieing though if I said I didn't love my old kitchen. It was cute, and a little kitschy and part of me will always love it. Cute as it was, it wasn't functional. The drawers had no gliders they were just wood on wood. The cabinets were too low to put anything under them, the list goes on and on.

A few more pictures when the stuff was in it. Please ignore the dirty dishes. I actually took these before photos quite a while ago.


So if you are walking in my kitchen. The stove is immediately to your left, you would be facing the window and sink head on. The fridge faces the stove. This is a small kitchen folks. We work with what we got.

So before the big reveal. Let's do some in progress photos, shall we. I mean what is the point if I don't make you suffer a little bit with me.

 Demo had begun, Andrew did most of the work as is usually the case around our house.
That is what was left once we pulled out the cabinets. Now let's just do a friendly reminder here, my kitchen had the original 1945 cabinets. So as you can see from the outlines on the wall this stuff was old. What you may also be noticing is there is no drywall behind my cabinets. They were attached to the concrete itself. Queue the real fun beginning.
 Andrew in the process of removing the 5 layers of floor we had. It was a little nuts. Below is the original floor on top of the original wood flooring. Pretty I know!

 Some very confused pets and a glimpse of the living situation during reno.
An exhausted Roo, he worked so hard that first night. The sad part is that wasn't the worst of it. The ceiling became the deal breaker.

So I don't have a photo of the original ceiling. It had these panels on it, that the previous owner had put up. These tin panels and they were cute, but oh man oh man. They were glued onto our plaster ceilings. Let's just say sanding and patching became Andrew life for the next month, and dust became the every day thing you lived in.

So for the next few days we had to build a wall and dry wall. On top of that we were supposed to have our electrical done that saturday. Didn't happen so that put everything back, so began the waiting game.

Now another friendly reminder folks. I work from home which means I lived this 100% of the time. 14 days with no working sink.... no fun.

Then it started to get better! Queue the cabinets going in.

 I was very excited as you can clearly tell. Moby however, wanted to know what was in the drawers that had no counter top. He wasn't impressed.

From there it was floor install, followed shortly by granite that went in and then had to be torn out 5 days later as it was cut wrong. That was really fun.
With the floors and the granite in (the correct granite is shown above) we were then able to finish the electrical and put in the appliances. That right there my friends is the first dishwasher this house has ever had, and I am pretty sure it is really happy.

After that we went on vacation, because we freaking needed one. Then came the final push. We had to get a backsplah put in. We went with honeycomb shaped penny round style tile and we love it. It's the only thing I picked out in the kitchen. Andrew did the rest. (I know that is a crappy photo, but it shows the tile well).

Drum Roll please... The finished product...


This would be the first time a microwave has ever actually been in this kitchen before as well. Previously it was in our dining room, because the cabinets were only 10 inches high and microwave couldn't fit under that.
Tell me that double oven isn't dreamy!!! I adore it!
So there you have it folks. Our kitchen reno in a nutshell. We did not hire a contractor, Andrew did most of the crazy stuff. If you are in Richmond and want to know names of companies we found to do things like the electrical/flooring/cabinets etc. just give me a shout.

Now take a few minutes and compare the old to the new. It's a little bit nuts. Oh hell, here is a compare photo just for kicks.
Kind of crazy right?!?!!

So I hope you enjoyed the kitchen reno journey! 
~XOXOX~

1 comment:

  1. Your kitchen looks great! My name is Heather and I have a quick question about your blog that I was hoping you could answer! If you could email me at Lifesabanquet1(at)gmail(dot)com that would be great!

    ReplyDelete