Kitchen: Accomplished!

After several months of hard work, it’s finally finished, and we could not be more thrilled! A lot of time and effort went into revamping our little kitchen into a more beautiful and practical workspace. I can honestly say for the first time ever that  I LOVE MY KITCHEN! Everything was DIY other than our new granite countertops, which we had professionally installed. Let’s do a quick look back at our old kitchen.

Here’s the WAY before (circa 2007 when we bought the house):

And just slightly before (circa 2012 right before we started this little makeover):

Now, without, further ado, here is the after:

Well, there you have it! One newly DIY’d kitchen. We did so much to this space, it’s hard to even remember what all went into it. We definitely had a LOT of help from the grandparents with babysitting on weekends so we could get things done in here- without them, there is no way it would have been feasible to do so much with two babies! Here is what went into this kitchen:

- Demolishing old upper cabinet over the sink
- Ripping out the white laminate countertops (woo hoo!)
- Removing cabinet doors and hardware
- Repainting all the peeling/flaking cabinetry (still white, but a warmer white “Swiss Coffee” in semi-gloss by Behr)
- New brushed nickel hinges to replace the gold-hinges-spraypainted-white that looked horrible (The Knob Shop $40)
- New chunkier drawer pulls (we used the same cabinet pulls we had replaced after we bought the house) (The Knob Shop $10)
- New granite countertops in “Gallo Ornamental” for the majority of the kitchen. This is the one thing we did not do ourselves. I don’t know how to cut rock, so I figured that was a good thing to bring in outside help for (Stone Interiors- $1300)
- New undermount sinks instead of one clunky corner sink (Stone Interiors- $300)
- New gorgeous vintage-style faucet and sprayer (By Premier via Amazon) ($140)- this faucet is insanely nice. I was unsure since we got a pretty good deal on it, but it’s super heavy and of very good quality. I highly recommend it!
- Butcher block peninsula top (Numerar in Beech from Ikea $300 for block and shipping) which required cutting down, sanding, staining (Minwax Dark Walnut) and sealing with Waterlox ($35) to make it food safe over the stain
- Beadboard backsplash (Lowes $80 for four panels)
- Painting the beadboard “Swiss Coffee.” For the record, Painting beadboard=awful. You have to use a brush for all the crevices, and in the end, you might as well just paint the whole darn thing with a brush. It took me eight full hours to paint beadboard and the cabinetry/trim in the kitchen. My hand really hurt after that.
- Lots of new trim for the beadboard backsplash (Lowes- $50ish)
- Caulking, caulking, caulking. Oh my gosh, the caulking. Every single spot the beadboard or trim touched anything had to be caulked over.
- Open shelving- constructed from 12” x 4′ boards from Lowes ($30) and four metal brackets (Lowes $36). I bought four different brackets to decide between, and in the end, we felt most comfortable with the metal ones.
- New wall color in kitchen and living room (pics of that to come later!) in “Glass Tile” by Valspar
- Re-painted trim of our chalkboard to match the cabinetry

I think that’s everything… that was a lot of work, but it was well worth all of the late nights and elbow grease that we put into it. We spent about $3,500 on this upgrade- it’s hard to know exactly how much since we made endless trips to Home Depot and Lowe’s for little things like paint brushes and caulk, but I rounded up! All that remains to be done in this room are new dark wood floors which will be put in either at the end of this year or the beginning of 2013. I can’t wait for that to happen, but in the meantime, we are going to enjoy the fruits of our labor!  I will definitely keep accessorizing and messing with the shelf configuration, but for now, I am content to just rest and look at it. I am definitely in love with our new kitchen! What do you think??

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