our kitchen renovation: before and after

july 9, 2010 was the day we closed on our house and officially became homeowners for the very first time.  since today is july 9th, it only seemed appropriate to share some before and after photos of a huge renovation that we recently did to our home sweet home.

our house was built in the 1930s and the last time the kitchen was renovated was in the 1960s.  when we bought the house, we knew we would someday want to remodel the kitchen to make it our taste, but that project had to take a back seat over the past 8 years to more important projects with much more urgency (like re-roofing the whole house before the roof collapsed, completely redoing the entire front porch before it fell off the house, replacing the staircase to get up to our screen porch before someone fell through the stairs, and installing new garage doors because one of the old ones closed on my car . . . just to name a few).

needless to say, this kitchen redo has been a long time coming.  we waited not-so-patiently for the past 8 years and came close to starting the project several times.  now that it's finally done we are so thrilled and we love the way it turned out!  we took a ton of photos of the before, the during, and the after.  here are just a handful of some before and after shots to show the difference . . .

we're so happy that we both equally love the design of our new kitchen.  neither of us feel like we had to compromise to reach a design decision.  when we first started dreaming up our kitchen we each went our separate ways on different computers to search pinterest and google for ideas.  when we convened back together to go over our ideas, we were not the least bit surprised to see that we each had picked out the exact same design ideas.

we both love the look of white cabinets and how the white brightens up the kitchen so much.  we went with maple cabinets painted white with brushed nickel hardware.  the doors and drawers are all soft close which feels like such a luxury.  we love how the drawers and sliding shelves in the bottom cabinets open all the way out.

previously, we didn't have any cabinets to the left of the stove so we placed a rolling kitchen cart there to hold our microwave.  it's great that we were able to add both uppers and lowers to that section to give us added storage and counter space.

we really loved the overall layout of our existing kitchen, so we didn't want to change the placement of our stove, sink, or fridge.  the entire kitchen was gutted to make way for all new materials, but we kept the same appliance layout and most of the same overall layout.

we went with a quartz counter top that looks like marble because it is super durable and completely maintenance free.  it was a stressful decision to choose which quartz we wanted, but we're super happy with this design.

we kept our old stove, range vent, and fridge because all were purchased by us when we moved in and all were working just fine.  our old sink was a humongous double-basin cast iron beast.  our new sink is a single-basin granite stone sink which isn't as wide as our old one in order to give us more counter top space.  we absolutely love our new sink.  we also decided to add a dishwasher.  (i have to admit that i wasn't sold on the idea of a dishwasher since i actually like washing our dishes by hand, but i have quickly warmed up to it because it makes life so much easier and keeps all of those drying dishes off the counter top!)

we both absolutely love the look of traditional white subway tile, so it was an easy decision when picking out a back splash for our kitchen.  we chose white grout and we love how clean and bright it looks.

for the flooring, we chose a durable gray vinyl tile in big 12x24 sections.  depending on how you look at it, it has either a wood look or a swirl look.  it's pretty cool.

on the wall opposite our sink, we used to have a small dining table and a bakers rack to hold our small appliances.  it was too much furniture and too cluttered as soon as you walked in the back door, so we decided to simplify with a simple black square bar table with two benches that fit right underneath.  we have been loving eating at that table.

we didn't want to give up our rolling kitchen cart, so we put it against the wall in lieu of our large bakers rack.  it's great for keeping our microwave and keurig off the counter tops.

we removed the old wallpaper and painted the walls red about two years after we moved into our house.  we lived with the red for about six years, but grew tired of it after awhile.  since we both love the look of gray and white, we knew we had to paint the walls gray and change the trim out to white.  it was not easy picking a paint color.  at one point we had 30 different shades of gray paint swatches on the wall!  i'm glad we picked one that we both love and goes perfectly with the rest of the kitchen.

redoing our kitchen was a big decision that we knew would not only impact us, but our little guy too.  it turns out we're not the only ones who love our new kitchen.  leko is absolutely in love with it!  he has really been enjoying his new sink and loves lounging on the counter tops!

love, laurie