Kitchen Reveal!!

I never thought this day would come.  For the past month we've been working like crazy to finish our first floor apartment, and I can finally say that we're moved in!!  There are about a hundred things still on the to-do list, and lots of stuff still upstairs that needs to be sold or stored, but for the most part, we have completed this crazy marathon of a project!

I have dubbed this week "Reveal Week,"  Because I'm going to be revealing a lot of before and after photos, and other little projects as I finish them. Maybe I should have saved the best for last, but today I'm going to reveal my favorite room: the kitchen!

So I'll show the pictures first because I'm sure that's all anyone cares about ;-)  And then I'll write a little about the projects we did in here.  Obviously, we haven't hung pictures or anything in there yet, so the wall above our little "breakfast nook" table will be less bare in a few days.  Anyway, here we go!

Before:

After:

Before:

After

I really  wanted to leave some cupboard doors off because I love open shelving.  I decided to put some of my pretty things up there, and Luke made a custom little area for our microwave.  I love it!  I'm thinking about eventually painting the inside or even wallpapering...but not just yet :-)

There is a weird little spot in the kitchen where there used to be a door going outside (we think).  But they just left the frame there and filled in the hole when they built another apartment on the back of the house.  I was so excited when my hutch (from Ikea) fit there like it was made for the spot!  It makes the closed doorway not look quite so ridiculous.  These are the types of "fun" decorating challenges you get when you purchase an old house that was once a house, then turned into offices, then turned into apartments.

So that's that!  What a project.  the only room that required more work was the bathroom, which coincidentally is the smallest room in the whole house!  I'll probably reveal that tomorrow, so I'm getting ahead of myself.  In the kitchen...

Here's what we did:

1. Painted all the cabinets and trim white, and then painted a protective layer of polycrylic on top

2. Replaced all the hardware and pulls on the drawers and cabinets, and spray painted the hinges to match (Thanks to my father-in-law Tom for doing that for us!  It was so hard to find the right spray paint color!)

3. painted the ugly, gray paneling blue.

4. Removed the dated backsplash and replaced it with beadboard which we painted blue

5. Painted the faux brick on the bottom half of the wall white.

6. Removed the massive fluorescent lighting and replaced it with a ceiling fan and some non-blinding light bulbs.

7. Replaced the fluorescent light above the sink with an adorable pendant light.

8.  Removed the weird shelving/enclosure around the radiator.  I love radiators and think they show so much of the character of the house, so I wanted it to be open and visible!

9.  Deep cleaned everything.  Multiple times.  

10.  Put in a new stove.  This was such an answer to prayer because one night we saw a friend on Facebook advertising a stove for sale at a really low price.  We needed one, and had been too busy to look, so God dropped one right in our laps.  And when Luke and his dad went to pick it up, she took another $25 off of the price, just because!  We were so thankful and so blown away :-)

11. Switched the brown refrigerator with our white one.

12. Rewired some stuff (obviously I don't know much about this part...I didn't help with the scary electrical stuff!)

I think that about covers it.  My main goal in this room was to brighten it up.  The cabinets were dark before, the walls and the faux brick were dreary, and don't even get me started with the fluorescent lights!  As my aunt accurately described, "it felt like prison in here before you changed the lighting!" ha!  

I'm really happy with how the space turned out!  I cooked my first meal in it last night, and it was like heaven.  It is roomier than my old kitchen and there's a tiny bit more storage and counter space.  I love it!  I also love my little "breakfast nook."  It's cozy...I'm sitting there as I type this :-)

We do have a few future projects for this room:

1. Install a dishwasher!!! (maybe)

2. Perhaps replace the flooring sometime way down the road.  We left the same flooring in because it wasn't terrible, but now that the walls and cabinets are so bright, it makes the creamy/tan floor color look a bit dingy.  

3. Replace dated sink fixtures (and maybe the whole sink).

Bathroom reveal tomorrow!