Before & After: Kitchen Remodel

 

 

I've really been procrastinating posting photos of the new kitchen, because, even though it's finished, I don't feel like it's complete. There are still a ton of little things I would like to do (i.e. stain the grout in the subway tile back-splash light gray, get/make some flat roman shades with the perfect white & yellow geometric patterned fabric, find the perfect piece of LARGE art to hang on the blank wall behind the dining table, and the list goes on and on). Then I had an epiphany. There is not a single room in my house that I feel is "complete." At this rate, I would never share my beautiful new kitchen and all the hard work that went into it. So here it is...

*I threw my friend, Sharla, a baby shower (more on that later) and just left up the bunting. It goes in Harvey's nursery, but that big wall is so bare. I guess I'll leave it there until I find the perfect piece of art to take its place.

I adore this little kitchen. The first night it was done, I suggested to Ryan that we should bring our pillows and a blanket and sleep right there on the hard wood floor so I could star gaze at it all night. It's all the little things, things you can't really see, that make my day. Things like: 

• the height of the counter tops being up to standard (I guess the last kitchen was built for a very short woman in the late 1960's, leaning over to chop or do dishes used to kill my lower back)
• the refrigerator being hooked up to a water line so the water/ice machine works (I LOVE to have a glass of ice water with me at all times. And now, we'll save a small fortune by not needing to buy so many water bottles)
• having drawers. yep, that's right, our last kitchen had NO drawers. 
• cupboards that close, even if you don't shut them at the exact same time.
• being pleasantly surprised all over again every time I walk out into the living room, I hope I never get used to it.

I could go on forever, but I won't. I was hoping that having a nicer kitchen would automatically make me a better cook. It totally has. It's just made me WANT to cook, which is a big step for me. I just want to be in there all the time. I love it.

More rambling about the kitchen...

*ryan, looking very official... or very lost

During the kitchen remodel, I thought I was going to be that girl who knew exactly what she wanted. I would wow the contractors with how decisive a woman I was. But something that surprised me about building a new kitchen was how suddenly big decisions are needed to be made about things you haven't really given a second thought (because all you had was your first thought and didn't realize that wouldn't work out). ONE of (many of) those things that I knew what I wanted but couldn't have and had to pick something else quick was the countertops. 

I have a pinterest folder filled with pictures of shiny white kitchens and their pristine marble countertops. Apparently, marble is a horrible material for a kitchen countertop. Especially if you have little kids. It is very porous and absorbs marinara sauce and red fruit juice like a sponge. It's also a very hard substance that tends to shatter glass dishes easily. Thanks for nothin' pinterest. SO... Ryan and I went on a crazy hunt for some granite that was on the gray scale. We went to a couple different warehouses and got so many samples we could have been the 4th little pig who built his house out of granite. But I didn't love any of them. 

UNTIL... one night, with eyes burning from searching a warehouse and jotting down product numbers for samples to take home, I walked by "Kashmir White." It was love at first sight, with a slab of rock. Literally. In an instant, I saw our future together. I saw my children and I, wearing our aprons, rolling out cookie dough on this surface, my little ones with their homework papers sprawled out all over it, and myself with a bottle of windex in my hand every night, making it sparkle like new- the way my parents taught me :).  I can't tell you how much I love this granite. It's probably because of how much I DIDN'T love anything else. It's the perfect mix of white and gray. It has subtle warm and cool shades of blue, tan, burgundy, and black that will allow me to use whatever accent colors I want. It always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS looks clean (which can be a bad thing... it's probably filthy most of the time. During the remodel, all the other samples looked so dusty, but that little square of Kashmir White looked freshly windexed). It reminds me of those falling sand pictures I used to love (were those an 80's thing? I don't see them anymore), and just like those sand thingys, I could sit and stare at it all day. 

Somewhere in the middle

You know you're in the middle of the kitchen remodel when: 

you've got a bathroom sink full of dirty dishes
you quickly realize the value of paper goods
your kids take up the hobby of cup stacking because of all the plastic cups around

you get to have cold cerial for 75% of your meals
the other 25% of your meals are cooked on an electric skillet

your AC bill is 3 times its normal price from running all day with all the windows open 
(you really wanna keep those guys happy)
it feels like Christmas every night when you come home, not knowing what you're house will look like

your fridge is in the living room

you yearn for the day when you can walk around your house in just your underwear again

*can you feel it!? I can feel it. I'm in love already.

One Day.

It only took them one day to strip the old kitchen down to it's mice nest infested bones. And I could not be happier. At this rate, our new kitchen will be done by 5 o'clock tomorrow evening.

Let's start at the very begining, a very good place to start...

 Before                                                             AFTER!

Every time we get the coupon mailer in the mail, I find an add for recessed lighting that says, "GOT UGLY KITCHEN LIGHTS?" I laugh to myself, then show it to Ryan and ask him, "Does this look a little familiar?" I swear the "before" picture looks like they came to my house and took a picture of the ceiling light in my kitchen. We've had this giant industrial flickering light/bug trap in the middle of the kitchen ceiling forever. But not anymore. Phase 1 of project new kitchen was recessed lighting. The picture doesn't do it justice, but I swear this change made me feel like I got a brand new house.

We are slowly but surely on our way to a more pleasant, more functional, more beautiful kitchen. I'm SO excited. Good riddance giant moth trap of a light.