The Kitchen Remodel

It's finally time--the one I know you've all been waiting for--the kitchen remodel blog! 😁 Because, let's face it, everyone loves a great before-and-after, and this one's pretty good!

When we first moved into our house 2-1/2 years ago, the kitchen was outdated sure, but it was usable. Some of the things I didn't like in the kitchen were the poor lighting, the vent hood over the stove that vented directly into the kitchen--I smoked up the kitchen quite a few times before we figured out why that kept happening!--, and the fact that there was no central heating floor vent for the kitchen. Man, it got hot in there when I was baking or cooking! The reason for the lack was made obvious when we pulled the old flooring up after the storm--the air vent had simply been covered over by the linoleum.

I don't have a picture of the pantry before to show you, but you can kind of see it in the picture below off to one side; my biggest problem in there was space. It was a combination pantry and laundry room , and it was tight! You could barely turn around in there what with the washer and dryer and the second refrigerator and a water heater in the corner. Storage was also a problem: the only shelf storage for food items was an old doorway that had been drywalled in and converted into a set of narrow shelves, but you could still see what it used to be. (This drove Jimmy crazy--he said it looked sloppy and unfinished. I was just glad to have a place to put my dry goods!)

When the tree fell on our house, it was not immediately obvious that the kitchen had been affected. After all, the hole punched through our roof was in the master bedroom closet at the end of the house, but by the second day, there was a growing puddle of water on the kitchen floor draining directly from a growing brown spot in the ceiling, so it was quickly apparent that this room would also have to be redone. Since there was no way to remove the bad flooring without removing the cabinets and there was no way to salvage the cabinets (they had been built in place), that meant that everything would be replaced. Demolition time! 😁

Once the crew had the cabinets and walls and ceiling and floor in both rooms taken down, it was time to fix the damaged subfloor.

We decided it was also a good time to fix that air conditioning problem; since Jimmy and his dad are both licensed air conditioning mechanics, that was a snap!

But eventually it was all done, and Van and his crew were able to work their magic.

New subfloor...

New walls and ceiling (with potlights--I was sooo excited!--bye-bye, dark kitchen!)....

And finally...

Funny story about that paint: it's the exact same color as the previous kitchen. It came with the house, and I loved it (my favorite color is blue). In fact, the kitchen was the only room in the house that we didn't repaint; we just touched up the cabinets and cleaned the walls. When the contractor went to match the paint, he couldn't find the exact match, so he took a piece of the old paneling to match. My sister commented on the color after it was repainted, and was surprised to learn it was the same color as before! I guess all those old cabinets kind of hid it.

Once all the cabinets and countertops had been installed, it was time to move our appliances back into the kitchen (they had been living in storage for the last couple months) and install our new vent hood...that Jimmy made sure vented out the roof--no more smoky kitchens!

We're almost done! Time to add the finishes, like this beautiful metal backsplash from 

americantinceilings.com. We measured our space and then ordered a kit from the website that included everything we needed. It took about a day to install it all what with the cutting and fitting, but I think the end result is well worth it, don't you?

I'm sure you're wondering, "Where are the upper cabinets?" When we first moved into our house and I repainted the cabinets, I left the doors off of some of the uppers because I LOVE open shelving and I was trying to recreate the look until we had the money to replace them. Jimmy also put up two shelves in one end of the kitchen to give me more storage space (refer to the picture of the kitchen before) and aid my aesthetic impulses. 😋 So it was a no-brainer when it came time to install new cabinets--we chose to make all the uppers open shelving. (This also cut our cabinet bill in half 😉.) To minimize any intrusion into our new backsplash, we chose these cast iron J-shelf brackets from the Etsy store Modern Urban Metals, and Jimmy soon had my shelves in place.

I love how much more open and spacious the kitchen looks because of them!

Also, if you're wondering about my island--that was a Mother's Day present Jimmy built for me a year and a half ago out of some scrap butcher block he found and some metal shelving pieces. It's on castors so I can move it around as needed, and is great for holding miscellaneous things that just don't fit anywhere else (like our large collection of cookie cutters 😁).

On the opposite wall of my kitchen lives one of my favorite things in this space--my Jell-O mold collection. I love the way the copper molds look, so pretty on the blue, but these are also working vessels. Any time I make Jell-O for the kids, the molds get pressed into service, and the kids love to take turns picking out the mold to use that day. Functional (and tasty) art indeed!

If you want to start your own collection of Jell-O molds, I found every single one of these at thrift stores and flea markets; average price was $2.50, though I did spend as much as $5.00 on a few. The two flat baskets were both yard sale finds, I believe, and I don't think either of them cost over $1.00. So you can get a great-looking display for a really affordable price if you're willing to be patient and search for them. Of course, the hunt is part of the fun!

The pantry got lower cabinets and open shelving on top, and with my laundry now in a separate room (hallelujah!), I now have twice the storage for kitchen supplies as I did before, which is wonderful, since I wasn't able to fully unpack all my baking and cooking things before. The upper shelves hold my cookbooks and smaller kitchen appliances, while the lower cabinets hold extra cake pans, cookie tins for gifting, lunchboxes and the kids' many, many thermoses and cups! My favorite part in here is my baking cabinet in the lower corner--all my baking ingredients in one place with the mixer directly above on the counter. Having everything in one area really streamlines the process of baking something, and makes it so much easier to have something in the oven quickly. This area got a LOT of use this last month with all the Christmas baking I do every year!

And, as you can see from the above right-hand picture, Jimmy rebuilt that in-the-wall cabinet, giving me a dedicated place to store all of my home-canned goods and whatever else I want to put there. I wish I had a before picture to show you, but trust me--this looks a lot better than the old one did! All of my other dry goods are now stored in the only tall cabinet in the kitchen--in the corner where the kitchen refrigerator used to be--making them much more accessible for cooking.

That's it--one big transformation that gives me a safer, more user-friendly space to work in. I think this might be my favorite room in the house now (although the playroom/office is a close second!); it's certainly one I spend a great deal of time in! 😋