Are you ready to see your fixer upper?
The kitchen is complete!
If you know Brian at all, it shouldn't come as a surprise that once things got moving, he felt the need to fix all the things. This included tasks like aligning our weird uneven cabinetry. If you look closely at the lower cabinets in the first picture, you can see how one cabinet is slightly longer than the other. Our cabinets were full of things like that and he fixed all of it. He also cut a hole in the ceiling to make the range hood actually vent to the outside, among a trillion other details that I never would've worried about on my own.
Our kitchen is an L shape so it's awkward and doesn't flow all that well. We talked about gutting it someday but that would be mucho $$$$$$$ and we'd lose our guest bathroom if we wanted to open it up so we decided to instead give it a make-over and it has made ALL the difference.
SO, without further ado...
KITCHEN JOURNEY 2016
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| Sink #1. The previous owner installed two sinks because his mother-in-law lived with them and he got sick of the arguing. Also, laminate floors and mismatched counter tops. |
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| Sink #2. |
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| If you follow me on social media you probably learned about how we uncovered these chef decals from the 1930's or 1940's underneath a million layers of paint. |
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| I plan to color correct this photo and hang it somewhere in the kitchen. Our house was built in 1938 so they are probably close to the kitchen's origin. |
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| Sink #2 removed, along with the tile counter-tops. Notice the kitchen mirror. Huh? Who needs a mirror in their kitchen?! |
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| Just a different angle, mid-project, looking into the kitchen from the dining room. |
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| We took to throwing stuff into the yard to get it out of the way. Most of it was then covered with tons of snow for the rest of the winter. Needless to say, our yard looked pretty white trash when the snow melted. |
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| We decided to do tile counter-tops to save money and we picked a gray concrete style. |
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| Brian installing the subway tile back-splash. |
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| GROUT. This is where that silly mirror used to be. But seriously, who needs a mirror in their kitchen?? |
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| This is about the part when I started to get really excited about the transformation. |
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| Brian's design contribution. |
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| Back-splash and counter-tops done. Onto the flooring. We found about 3-4 layers of linoleum underneath the laminate but we had it tested and it came back positive for asbestos in the glue so we opted to just lay the tile on top. Heaven forbid, but if we ever want to change the flooring again, we'll do it right. :) |
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| I let Brian pick out the tile. He did good! |
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| In the midst of the project, I presented some google images and said to Brian: "What if...(all great DIY things come from the words 'what if...') we did a street mosaic like in real NYC subways?" Brian's response: "I could figure that out." And he did. It only took 3 seasons of Parks and Recreation to complete. Here it is being installed. |
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| And the wall after all tiles were installed. |
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| I hated the yellow paint by this point in time so I matched the gray in the mosaic tiles. Brian tweaked the mosaic a little bit to include those white florets. |
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| It's starting to look like a finished kitchen! (more gray paint) |
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| Brian added some shelving where that dumb mirror was and we traded the big kitchen sink for a bar sink. |
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| Chuck approves. We took out the canned lighting and added a simple light fixture with one of those expensive Edison bulbs. This was before we painted the area around the bulb to match the cabinets. |
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| New dishwasher (and sink)!!!!!! |
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| This makes me so happy. I planted some succulents in the hanging planters. We'll see if I can keep them alive. |
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| Brian whipped up those spice racks one day, he found the retro canisters on etsy, and that basil is already 33% dead. |
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| I finally bought an automatic coffee maker! More retro tins for coffee and tea. |
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| That black vent (bottom left) used to just be a piece of plywood covering a hole in the cabinets. Brian filled in the hole and we added the vent cover for aesthetics. |
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| Better view of the vent cover. |
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| And finally, NEW OVEN AND FRIDGE. Swoon. There's the range hood for which Brian added the duct work in the attic so it vents to the outside. I heard a lot of grumbles from the ceiling that day. Not a fun project, but worth it. |
Well, that's all she wrote. Another house project in the books. 5 months well worth it!
It makes things tough when you absolutely hate being in your kitchen. I guess now I can't use that as an excuse to forego cooking.
looks awesome!
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