The Kitchen *Ta Da*

I know I have been big talk and broken promises on getting a kitchen post up, so I’ll tease no longer.  This. Is. It.  After trolling through the 183 before, during, during and after pictures, I’ve done my best to distill it down to the basics.

For starters — here’s the only picture I could dig up of what we started with back around move-in day. 

Baby blue laminate countertops, 80s oak trimmed and white laminate cabinets (the upper doors were already taken off in prepared-ness for a re-do), this weird shelving unit a former owner had constructed with an oddly placed light bulb (and it turns out the shelving thing was covering up a big spidery hole in the ceiling.  The before picture doesn’t really show the beauty of the 60s-70s era peel and stick tile flooring.  It had so many indentations making up the pattern that I could never fully make it look clean. . . (but to be honest, after one attempt, I never really tried that hard again . . . )

To show you how far we’ve come, here’s a few “during” pictures while we tried to figure out how to cope with this little kitchen (overall open space is about 9′ x 10′).

Things got a little hectic as we tried to find a way to store everything — both JT and I enjoy cooking (maybe JT a little more . . . ) and we cook from scratch a lot. 

Things also got a little boring with a white on white palette — after surveying some of my designer friends and the husband, I decided to go bold and change out the walls to blue.

Then, a few weeks ago . . . floor prep began and in came NEW TILE!  JT and his dad did most of the hardest work but I got to get in there and roll up my sleeves and help with grouting and sealing.  I also used the tile saw, which I was very very proud of because as a general rule I don’t mess with power tools (left-handed person’s death sentence). 

(See how nasty that floor was!  That’s as clean as it could be!)

And, drumroll please, here are the afters you all have been waiting for . . .  to better see the tile (and to get pictures of such a teeny-tiny space) I did some bird’s-eye views for you:

Here’s a floor plan to orient yourself, if you’re not dizzy from the bird’s-eye fly through:

And a few more, looking through the kitchen from the doorways:

This is my favorite view and favorite part of the kitchen (after the floor) right now:

Oh Ikea, how I love you!  This is an Ikea Grundtal rail system (same as the pot rail on the other wall) and it holds so much clutter up off our little run of counter.  If your mother ever told you “A place for everything, and everything in its place”, she was right!  It’s so much easier to keep the kitchen clean now that everything has a place to go to.

So, that’s the kitchen.  I still have a two page list printed out and hanging on the side of the fridge of little things that need to be completed (including but not limited to actually doing something artsy-esque to the side of the fridge . . . ).  Some I’m trying to tackle in the next few weeks, like painting the base cabinets to match the uppers, installing pulls on the cabinets and painting and reinstalling all the trim and floor transitions.  Some things are just waiting until the perfect thing comes along, like an art piece or something I’m hunting for to hang over the stove.  All in all, I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and happy to have a kitchen that feels like home. 

 Thanks for reading, everyone!  This little blog has really motivated me to work on the kitchen and other projects and I appreciate it so much!  So feel free to comment away — what do you love?  What do you hate?  What would you have done differently for your own house?  Where can I find that perfect art piece for over the stove?  

Cheers!  CT