Our kitchen needed a lot of work before we moved in. The original cabinets were in rough shape, and the function wasn’t great. I really didn’t like having a stove right next to the back door, and hated how closed off the kitchen felt with the wall dividing it and the dining room.
So we renovated.
We tried to tear up the tiles ourselves, but they were really stuck. Eventually we ended up hiring a guy off Craigslist to do it, and he made much better progress and was able to finish the job in a day.
For a while, we didn’t have a floor, and we spent a lot of time trying to decide what type of new flooring to install. The rest of our floors are oak hardwood, so we didn’t want something that looked too similar (but didn’t match), and tiles created too much of a difference in floor height–nearly an inch higher than the hardwoods creating a tripping problem (which is a big reason why we tore out the previous tiles).
We considered linoleum which is what the kitchen originally had, and what the house was designed for (with the subfloor in the kitchen being the same height as the hardwoods in the dining), but we couldn’t find any we liked.
Finally, we settled on laminate and were able to do the floor ourselves in a weekend with only mild cursing.
I know it’s a little weird to have a washer and dryer in your kitchen. Well, 1) they were supposed to be enclosed in a closet, but our contractor measured wrong, and 2) the existing washer and dryer were/are in the basement, which we intend to renovate into a rental unit. So a washer and dryer was necessary upstairs, and this was the only place to put them.
I do really wish they fit IN the closet though, so the door could be shut.
I don’t want to talk about how many hours I spent painting these cabinets. I know it was approximately six hours of sanding. And then 4-6 coats of paint/primer. And then I had to redo some of the bottom cabinets because I spilled coffee on them and they didn’t wipe clean–so I re-painted and then used some clear poly on top to seal them and now they wipe well.
But they are the original cabinets, which is kind of fun. There’s a built-in breadbox, cutting board, cookie sheet rack, and lazy-Susan.
Yes, I painted the insides of the cabinets too. I hate opening cabinets and seeing they’re not finished on the inside. Every inch of these things was painted, including the lazy-Susan which was possibly my least favorite part of the whole process (and honestly, I didn’t enjoy any of it, but it saved us a lot of money).
The obvious focal piece is our new stove and hood. We had our contractor open the wall and it made the kitchen a lot brighter and it feels like it flows with the rest of the house so much better now!
And the Ikea cabinets we got to make the island look pretty good, don’t they? I don’t think most people even notice they don’t exactly match the original cabinets.
Did you see our dining room remodel?
Anthony & Erin 
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