Kitchen

The ONLY picture we have of the old kitchen, and of course I had to take a picture of the picture since I only have a hard copy. These poor cabinets were painted over and over again....if you take a look at the lower right portion of the photo, the cabinets are a light blue. The light blue was under the crackled off-white color, which at first I tried to scrape off, but ended up sanding down.  These cabinets are ceiling high, so it was very difficult to get things down without me jumping up on the counter or grabbing a step ladder. Already in this photo, the window has been replaced. At first there were two windows, but once again, Jason was so fast at demo that he replaced the window too fast to even get a 'before" picture.

Once again ,sorry about the bad photo, I can't find the originals. So here you can see we sanded down the cabinets and then tried to stain them. I say "tried" because all the cabinets were different kinds of wood, so they all took to the stain differently, leaving us with different shades. Check out that stainless steel sink, priceless! It is all one peice and was easy to clean, but sorry, not my style!

We kept the kitchen as it was in the photo above for a few years, before a tornado came through our neighborhood. What does a tornado have to do with a new kitchen you may ask? Well, our neighbor's extra-large tree branch fell onto our one-stall garage. When we got the insurance money for the garage, thanks to Jason and his handywork, we were able to build a brand new two-car garge AND put money into a brand new kitchen! Sooooo, then the demolitian began!

There are many changes in this photo, but I wanted to point out that we are SO incredibly thankful that my parents have come to help us on just about every project with this Money Pit. We repainted the ceiling white as well as painted the walls a new tan color. Due to Jason pulling down the cabinets to a more reachable height, he built a tray ceiling. The tray ceiling is one of my favorite parts of the new kitchen, it creates such wonderful ambiance when everyone congregates in the kitchen in the evenings.

Here you can see the light from the tray ceiling. It's a rope light! You can see the new cabinets which again were unfinished and stained by Jason....picture to come later in the blog. New tile backsplash, new countertop, and new sink (so thankful to get rid of that old one), and new stainless steel appliances.

Now to the other side of the kitchen.... barely any space to store anything on this side, especially with no cabinet doors to hide everything. The old appliances desperately needed to be replaced.

Here Jason is mudding the walls after tearing down the weird cabinetry. Also the unfinished cabinets are up, so much more storage! We also added some cabinetry and a countertop in between the fridge and the stove, with custom pull out drawers for pots and pans.

We chose a very dark chocolate almost black stain, after trying out so many different colors.

And the final product!

This little bistro table from Target (like that Carla?), is in the far right back corner. I once again told Jason I would use it to eat breakfast and yada yada, which I don't. But it actually gets good use since we always come in the back door, like when Jason comes in to take off his army boots.