Before and After 2: THE KITCHEN

I thought I should show the kitchen renovation since you saw a peek of it in yesterday's post. The bones of the kitchen were thankfully good, so I just had to strip it down and start from scratch.
Here is the kitchen as it was when we bought the house:



As you can see, it was probably the same way it looked when the house was built. At first glance you might not think the cabinets were that bad, but upon closer inspection, you'll notice that they were this hideous fake white-washe wood look. They also had strange rounded edges. I found a date on the back of one of them that said 1969. In the first pic, you can see that the kitchen had an odd doorway with the saloon doors, leading to the old tiny dining room. To get more cabinet space and to get rid of that opening, I slid the fridge down and closed in that door with my configuration.

Here is the kitchen after everything has been removed and the door opening closed up, a clean slate!






Now the real fun began as I started to reconstruct the kitchen to my standards. I searched everywhere for cabinets and never found the style that I liked for the room, so I decided to look to Ikea. Now, at the time, we didn't have an Ikea in Orlando, so I hooked up my handy covered cargo trailer and headed to Atlanta! Yes, I drove all the way to Atlanta to get those cabinets. Talk about pressure! I had to make sure that nothing was left out for this kitchen as I didn't want to drive all the way back for 7 hours again. There was only a small issue with missing pieces, but they were ordered online. Ikea cabinets are cost effective, look great, and have a good warranty on them....HOWEVER, just like all of their flat packed stuff, they are not the most fun to assemble, especially when it's an entire kitchen. Of course, I did it, but it took me about 4 days to do so. Ikea cabinets also are handy because of the track that the cabinets attach to at the top. It is made so that you can slide the upper cabinets to the exact position that you want without breaking your back. Then, you simply tighten them up. Nice.
So here it is: the finished kitchen remodel:


Everything is new: Lighting, marble floors, stainless backsplash (well looks like stainless, but is actually panels that you cut yourself and glue on-super easy to install), and of course, cabinets. I kept our old appliances to save money, but will soon upgrade to stainless to really tie it all together. Of course, I forgot to move the construction trash can :)

The pic below is from a little alcove that I made to place the small kitchen table. I wanted to set this area apart so I chose a grasscloth paper on the wall. Secretly, I planned this entire space size around that little table (also from Ikea).

And four weeks later, I had a finished kitchen! (Don't want to do that again any time soon)