The Kitchen

All of our updates in the kitchen have been cosmetic, as well as adding and replacing appliances.  It never became my dream kitchen or anything, but I think we at least improved the appearance.

Here's the kitchen when we bought the house:

Note the overwhelming amount of wood colored with outdated stain, which made the room seem quite dark.  Plus I thought the cabinet handles were ugly.  I never was a fan of the fake wood laminate countertops and backsplash, but we never invested the money for new countertops.

In the middle picture above, you can see the opening where the previous owner had two chairs.  We put a dishwasher in that opening, leaving a spot just big enough for our garbage can.

We took off the doors from the very top row of cabinets to make decorative cubbies.  We first painted them a darker shade of Tiffany Blue, and several years later I changed them to yellow.  I put my collection of milk glass in the cubbies.

I guess I should mention the most obvious update (the one we did first):  we painted all the cabinets white.  It was such a pain!  We sanded them all, primed them, and painted them.  At the time, oil-based paint was recommended for kitchens.  Unfortunately, oil-based paint yellows over time.  So our beautiful white cabinets eventually became off-white.  We added basic silver handles that had a bit of a retro vibe.

Here's a close-up of that awesome wallpaper:

We took down the wallpaper and found the walls behind were already painted turquoise/aqua, which is already one of my favorite colors.  We just painted a fresh coat of nearly the same color (we chose slightly lighter).

The floor was awful!  It was off-white linoleum that NEVER looked clean even immediately after I scrubbed it.

We had to live with it for several years until we could save up for something new.  We chose light wood laminate flooring.  This horrific linoleum was glued down in a way that made it nearly impossible to get up.  I would not like to relive that experience.

Here you can see the white cabinets, silver handles, and the turquoise cubbies with the milk glass.  This picture was taken before we got the dish washer.  Also, we eventually replaced that ugly sink with a stainless steel sink.

If you look past adorable baby Griffin, you can see more of the milk glass.

I put up cork board over the ugly laminate back splash and then pinned up pictures.  You have to look past cute toddler Nolan to see them. :)  Also, my hair was super short!

Here are some more recent pictures:

In these pictures you can see the new floor, the dishwasher, the new stove/oven, the yellow upper cubbies, and the backsplash painted gray.

Standing in the living room, you can see through the kitchen and into the family room.  We've always loved the somewhat open floorplan of our little home.  You can also see that I painted that door on the right (leads to the garage) white, put on a new silver doorknob, and made new curtains for the window portion of the door.

This door leads to the basement, and I also painted it white.  I love my hanging organizer from Thirty-One.  Our family calendar hangs above that organizer.

I bought this clock right after we bought the house.  I love that it's been part of the kitchen since we've been in this home.

When I added yellow and gray to the kitchen, I found these "digital scrapbook papers."  I paid for the file, printed out my three favorites, and framed them.

A couple years ago I made these silhouettes of our family members.  I painted the silhouettes with gray paint and covered the edges of the canvases with yellow and white ribbon.

The last two rooms I have left to show you are the ones that we completely gutted and remodeled.  Stay tuned!

Jessica