The Kitchen Renovation

Yay, our new house had a dishwasher!  But it is our lot to make our lives more difficult than they are, and we moved in thinking that at some point we would update the kitchen, especially since that is really where we spend the majority of our time.  The old kitchen was dark, and poorly laid out.  The cabinets were beat up, and the drawers were sticky.  The counter was made from 1x1 floor tiles, with an overhang that jutted into the dining room, a beautiful, red-brick fireplace that was off-center and nonfunctional, and a sharp edge for scalping short people.

Timeline 

1. Planning: 2 months
2. Getting a contractor: infinity (3 months)
3. Start date: right after memorial day
4. Rough renovation: 2 week demolition, plumbing, electric, tile, sheetrock...
5. Counters: estimated = 2 weeks; ACTUAL = 6 weeks!! for counters!! AAARRRGGGGHHHH.

Planning: We drew up plans at Home Depot, Lowes and Ikea. Island or u-shape? What about that outside wall? What to do with the window? Where to put the sink? What about the little radiator near the door?  And finally, where to put the fridge? Will it fit in the closet?  We finally settled on Ikea and used their nifty online software to design it a million different ways. 

Ye Olde Kitchen: from the dining room

From the back door

After: Freshly oiled butcher block.

After: Dining room

Day 1: Kitchen Demolition 

Dining Demolition

The gigantic trash heap 

Building it back up:  putting in insulation and drywall, taping and mudding

Putting in the kitchen tile: unfortunately these contractors were kind of slapdash and didn't pay close attention to the plan we had drawn up.  So, they didn't tile enough and it fell 6 inches short of the cabinetry! This was a surprisingly big problem, since we couldn't find thresholds to fit the space that would match very well.  Dan looked and looked and then finally happened upon to pre-existing threshold stone pieces that fit exactly.  The color matched perfectly too, it probably couldn't have matched better if we had planned it that way. 

Assembling the cabinets: We did this part ourselves as much for cost savings as for doing a fun project  together.  The assembly itself wasn't too hard, but definitely hard to find the time for.  We ended up spending a lot of time after the kids went to bed, so that they wouldn't swallow all the little pieces. Cabinets installed; waiting on countertops.

Lots and lots - and LOTS - of trips to the hardware store

Painting: One benefit of waiting so long for the countertops was that it gave us plenty of time to paint (which we needed!).  We started with the ceiling.

Painting: Next up, kitchen and dining room walls.  We picked a sage green, and painted both the kitchen and the dining room the same color to try to draw them in into one big room.  Like most of you had advised, we went for a very pale shade, but a little color went a long way. 

Cleaning up leftover spackle

The fridge fits! We found an awesome fridge that fits a lot of stuff but has a very small footprint.  The entire kitchen design hinged on fitting the refrigerator into the pantry space.  Without this, the fridge would have no space to go, and the sink and counters wouldn't be able to switch around. 

Painting the cabinet doors: We used Ikea cabinetry but used a company from North Dakota for the doors. We wanted slightly more traditional, wooden doors, especially since that they would get rougher use with us and the kiddos in the kitchen so much. This was tougher than I thought it would be though, since we were strapped for space and time, and we used thicker high gloss paint that required many coats and didn't dry very well.  But we were happy with the results!

With the doors put on! 

Adding the cabinet hardware:  We chose some neat hardware that was country cottage themed but also matched the chandelier that would go in the dining room, so we could add more features to pull the room together.  The finish was oil-rubbed bronze with some copper highlights.

Assembling the kitchen island:  we chose to do a floating island instead of an installed one.  It means we don't really have an outlet there, but I like it because we could make it look a little more country cottage, with the turned legs and floating look.  Also, the floor is poorly insulated (despite the renovation), so we were hoping that the toe kick heater under the sink could blow warm air across the whole floor. We found a large kitchen-grade butcher block piece of Acacia at lumber liquidators.  It turned out to have a few gouges (not nice!), but I think the colors are nice and warm, especially once it has been oiled.

Adding trim: Again, a cost savings for us to do it rather than the contractors, but this was a little tricker to coordinate; one parent doing child control and one doing trim. The lines of the actual house and all its measurements are not exactly square, and that niggles at Dan to no end, but I think he enjoyed figuring out his nail gun, circular saw and other fancy tools. 

Quartz countertop and backsplash:  Ahhh!!!  Almost done!  This was the real rate limiting step. We chose something called "Frosty Carrina" which looks gorgeous but took AGES to get put in.  The cabinets had to be fully installed before they could "template" the countertop, which took a few weeks, and then it took 4 more weeks (!) before they actually showed up to do it.  Of course, they showed up precisely at the time we were not at home, but luckily Yanique was able to let them in. 

Here is the ugly old closet in the dining room.  Again, so that we could tie the room together, we wanted this to be an inbuilt hutch that looked like our kitchen cabinets.  Dan found that an Ikea cabinet would actually fit right into this. That made the whole conversion a lot easier, because we could add regular doors, drawers and shelves right into it. 

Pretty-fying the air return: Dan created a nice wooden frame that would make the air return feel like it was part of the whole hutch. Then, in a stroke of genius, he added magnets so that it would mount over the old air return.  

We painted the frame and then cut some nice looking tin that would match our other room and the chandelier to fit inside of it. 

Butcher block open shelves: We had a long 10 in wide strip of butcher block remaining that was just too pretty not to do something with.  So, in keeping with the country cottage theme, we wanted to mount these as floating shelves.  They are heavy, though, so the install needed to be quite robust.  Thanks to Etsy for solving the problem for us.  We bought some heavy duty 36 in brackets. which had rods that inserted into the shelves.  Bob and Dan did some test runs to figure out exactly how to make those holes without destroying the wood - or breaking their arms.  

The window: Dan found some old counterweights and nice holes to the outside while he worked on this window.