The Kitchen Remodel

When we first considered buying the house we currently live in, Mr.A and I made a list of pros and cons of moving and selling our house that we had just built two years earlier. One of the pros we listed on our sheet was NO large projects needed. HA HA! If you know anything about me at all, I love to just dive in to projects, I start projects while my husband is at work and doesn't know what is going on. (I've been trying to work on that by the way).
We moved into the Colonial as I like to call her, On October 1st. We started demolition of the kitchen the weekend of Thanksgiving. Yeah, ummm....I didn't waste time.
So now here is the real professional part of this blog, my floor plan drawings. They are literally drawings done by me and a black sharpie. Please don't e-mail me asking for this professional service, it's a one time deal. Ok, seriously, I didn't know how else to explain the layout so here it is:

See, I told you it was real professional like.  It's hard to explain to people through pictures what we did but we basically moved the kitchen into this useless funky room that had a fireplace and then we tore out the old kitchen and that's where our kitchen table, pantry and mudroom are located.  We  had to move the exterior door, put in a sliding glass door and used our fireplace for our oven.
Here are some before pictures:

That concludes the tour of the kitchen, now we are moving onto the funky/useless room.  This picture is taken from the position of the exterior door, facing to your left, the kitchen would be on your right and you can see through the one doorway into the dining room which is brown and blue:

This picture is taken from the hallway looking towards the exterior door, the kitchen would be on your  left.

This is the view from the doorway that leads to the dining room, the kitchen is behind the paneled wall.

Now if you aren't totally confused, here's one of my favorite pictures, demolition!!!  I love using a sledge hammer and destroying things, maybe that's too much information for you.

Now onto the good stuff!

When designing the kitchen we wanted something that would fit in with the rest of the house.  We were going for a more classic feel than a modern one.  The subway tile, white cabinets, drawer pulls and hardwood floors gave us the feel we were looking for and we often hear from people, "Wow, this really fits in with the style of  your home."  We also really like the layout and are glad we flipped things around.  The other kitchen was like the batcave, it was dark, smelly and you really couldn't hear what else was going on in the house.  That wasn't cool with me.
Some of my favorite things in my kitchen are that my oven is in the fireplace.  With little kids running around I never have to worry about them touching a hot oven when I'm trying to take something out of the oven.  I love, love, love my cupboards that have glass doors.  My pantry is wonderful and I'm really glad we decided to put one in the kitchen.  We have multiple closets in the  hallway behind the kitchen that we could have turned into a pantry as well but we decided against that.  Thank goodness!  I did order a bookshelf type cabinet that was supposed to go on the end of the island but somehow that didn't get ordered and by the time it was all figured out, everything was installed and done.  That is the one thing I wish I had but I can definitely live without it.
I am quite happy with the amount of cabinets we have.  If we didn't have the pantry then I would be really limited with space.    I did order a bookshelf type cabinet that was supposed to go on the end of the island but somehow that didn't get ordered and by the time it was all figured out, everything was installed and done.  Three years later there isn't anything I really would change about  my kitchen layout, design or style.  I think turned a dark, poorly designed area into a bright, well functioning kitchen for our family while staying under $15,000. 
Also, if you would like to see more of what we've done to our house, please check out our Cloffice Reveal, Mudroom Makeover and Pantry Makeover.

Coming soon, the Playroom Makeover! 


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