A Peek at Our Kitchen!

I'll be honest: I've been avoiding showing you guys the interior of our house because it is UGLY. When I mention that we are remodeling our house, I don't mean that in a purely cosmetic, "let's put new paint on the walls" kind of way. We are working on a BIG remodel, including moving some walls, which can get messy. Josh is doing most of the work himself for now. I hope I can start helping more as the deconstruction dust settles, and I can be around more without fear of inhaling things that will harm me and the baby But, I guess the purpose of "before" pictures are to make you really appreciate the "after," right? We are still in the middle of the work, but I'd like to show you our kitchen!

Here's the before: From afar, it looks fine, right? Ugly, but not a huge problem.


When you take a closer look, you see the ugly ugly ceiling, wallpaper border, and-my personal favorite- Dollar Tree sticky, cheap floor tiles for counter tops! It's funny how they spaced them out so it has the look of real tile and grout. Gorgeous, right?



The main flaw we found with this kitchen is that it was completely closed off to the rest of the house. I love to cook, and we really enjoy having people over, so we knew we HAD to open up the wall into the living room! We're opening up the kitchen and adding a bar-height counter on the living room side. This will be great for interacting with people while we cook, and just having a nice, open home.




By opening up that wall, we are losing a LOT of storage space, so we are creating a built-in pantry and built in cabinets. There is a bathroom right off the kitchen, and we really really can't stand when a bathroom opens into the kitchen. It's kind of gross. So, we decided to cut into the downstairs guest bathroom and create the built-ins and refrigerator nook here. I know large bathrooms are what most people love, but we decided we'd rather use as much space for communal, shared spaces as possible. We're pushing back the bathroom wall and adding about 4 more feet of space and storage to the kitchen. The built-ins will be built around the fridge here.


We have about 5 different types of flooring right now! Josh found a bunch of rotted wood on the floors, and it turns out we had beetles that were eating out the wood. This also led to a lot of our siding and wall needing to be cut out! This section of our kitchen looks so run down and awful right now! Our back door isn't framed in anymore, so check out our sweet security system of screwing in a 2x4 across the door.



That's our kitchen in it's current state!

It's the project we are working on next, and we'll be going for a 1950's vibe. Our cabinets will be painted white and some bright color. We'll put in black PaperStone counter tops, which are made of post-consumer recycled paper and resin! The floor will most likely be black and white tile, but we haven't made up our minds for sure. I just can't wait to have a nice kitchen to cook up delicious treats in! I mean, look at how cute our vintage early-1950's stove is, how could I not want to be around it all the time?


I hope I didn't scare you with pictures of my home! Remodeling has had it's challenges for sure, but we can't wait to be finished and have a place to relax and enjoy our little family!