I realized that I never posted pictures of our completed kitchen renovation. We started with the floor a year ago, at the end of October. We worked on different phases for the next 8 months with some lulls in there. Our house was built in 1900 so kitchens are never great in houses from back then. A lot of kitchens were actually in the basement in the bigger houses of that time period. Ours was on the main level luckily but it suffered from an ill configured layout and it was stuck in the 70's.
BEFORE: The countertops were white with gold flecks that absorbed everything-rust from a wet cookie sheet, spilled kool-aid, you name it. Not even straight bleach would help it.
AFTER: We priced granite since we don't have a lot of countertop but in the end we felt that extra money could be be put to use in better ways in the kitchen( like by adding an island). This is just laminate but it looks a million times better than what we use to have 
AFTER: Our brand new stainless steel sink
with new faucets! Slightly better.
We wanted to put new doors on the cupboards but the sizes of ours was so wacky it would have been a custom order and more pricey. So we instead just framed out each cabinet door and refinished them white and put new hardware on them. Our new hardware matches the original draw pulls in our butlers pantry.
And Voila!!
The old green backplash was some sort of board, though not made of wood.
Thanks to youtube I found a video on how to do a subway tile backsplash and did it myself!
When we moved in to our home 6 1/2 years ago, every room had carpet except the foyer. That included the kitchen, bath and the dining room. Even though we only had 3 kids at the time, that was enough to ruin the carpet quickly-especially when one of them was in the midst of potty training.
We pulled a lot of it up right away, but we still had carpet on the main staircase and the stairs leading from the kitchen to the main stairs.
This is a little of what that small set of stairs looked like when I pulled up the carpet:
I had already painted the fronts of them white at this point. They weren't in the worst condition but not the best either. At least they didn't have inch thick cement hard carpet glue like our other rooms did.
And here is what they looked like all finished with some warm brown paint on each step:
You can also see our nice tiled flooring in the snapshot above. It was peel and stick tile for many years, which by the way, is a nightmare to pull up.
There use to be a double oven in our kitchen at some point. Then they were taken out and it left this large cabinet with a very big hole in it. So it was made into a "pantry" which really means some shelving jimmy rigged and a curtain put over the hole. I called it The Great Abyss. It was so deep and dark that I lost stuff all the time and it was not unusual to reach in for flour and come out with a spider instead.
So we tore that out and add a wall cabinet and an over the range microwave. We moved our stove from across the room also. Our microwave was on a stand elsewhere in the kitchen previous to this.
This simple addition and reconfiguration really opened up the space. We had already demolished the old double oven /pantry in the picture below. It felt really good to tear that thing out, though the Hubby did take out a chunk of skin and likely a little bone hacking at it outside with a hatchet.
He is not allowed to use a hatchet again. Ever.
We also have a new stove now that is all white and is a flat top. It's a convection double oven and I am in love with it.
You can see in the pic below where our stove use to be. I don't think it was originally there though judging by the big gap between the counter and stove. Perhaps that is where they had the cooktop was at one point, I don't know. And you love the styling vent hood I know but it had to go, sadly enough. We added a base cabinet in that gap which also extended the counter top space. Then we moved our fridge from the far corner of the kitchen into where the stove used to sit. Now we have a nicer work triangle!
And better yet none of our dishes in the drainer fall into the gap now. BONUS!
You can also see our new kitchen island. I looked at many many islands to figure out what would work best for our kitchen space, our budget and our needs(added work space, extra cabinets and a drawer).
We settled on this one. It has a treated wooden top, cabinets and a drawer that open from either side, and we were able to put 2 bar stools on the far side. It is super heavy and durable. I did have it turned 90 degrees from where you see it now, so it was parallel with the fridge and sink. That looked fine but with my stove on the other wall it worked better to have it parallel with that. But it's nice that it can be versatile.
You will also note some bead board going around the room. This is a fabulous wallpaper. There are some out there I have seen that are pretty thin, but this is super thick and really looks and feels like bead board. The advantage is that is is much cheaper than the real stuff and super easy to apply. It really lightened up the room and gave it more character.
We also replaced our garbage disposal and changed out the old ceiling fan for a semi-flush mount that matched the new cabinet hardware.
I would say in all this renovation cost between $2000-$2500 since we did all the labor ourselves except some electrical for a couple new outlets to accommodate the switching of appliances and my great BIL tiled the floor for us. Props to my Hubby's cousin for helping us with installing the countertops too! We are not that handy when it comes to major home renovations like this and by no means an expert, yet through the gift of the internet and youtube we saved THOUSANDS of dollars on labor. But it is more time consuming and more of a headache I will admit than just hiring the work out.
I really do love this kitchen now and will hate to leave it.
I pray the next family will like it just as much though.
* Credits: These 2 photos were taken by our realtor*
Many Blessings,
The Mama
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