Mini-Kitchen Remodel

So, it's been a bit quiet on the blog, but it's been crazy busy here.  I'm in the middle of two or three fairly major projects.  We are 95% complete with a mini kitchen remodel.  I'm also working on the tiniest bedroom in the house.  And I'm trying to get all the doors upstairs painted black and the hardware cleaned up and reinstalled.  It's been a busy summer.  What else is new.  It cracks me up when people ask if I get bored during the summer.  I wish!  Would love the chance to get bored! Nope, it's always go go go!

But back to the kitchen remodel.  Remember the kitchen looked like this when we bought this house four years ago:

Ugh.  That picture still smells to me!

Then, we replaced the counters, pulled out the wall ovens and stove top, replacing it with the stove.  And we painted.  And it looked pretty much like this for the past several years.

Well, one day, recently, I noticed a small leak under the sink and harried P into looking at it.  What she discovered down there was fairly frightening.  Actually, it was terrifying.  She found some ancient chemicals (DDT anyone?), but that wasn't the scary thing.  She found a pair of ginormous men's underwear....soiled ginormous men's underwear.  EWWWW!  And thankfully, we didn't get any pictures.  

After that, P was convinced the old metal cabinets had to go.  I was all for that because it would me I would get more counter space and a dishwasher.  Yes, I have been dishwasherless for four years.  Agony, especially with how often we entertain.  

So, in preparation for some friends coming to help me install it, I had to get it all demo'd.  Another wonderful friend helped me pull out all the old stuff and get up the old flooring.

Can I just say that I despise the yellow laminate backsplash??  I would love to get rid of it, but it runs behind the upper cabinets.  I can't afford to redo the upper cabs right now, so I live with the laminate.  My friend and I did scrub that gross line for about an hour and got it to be very pale and barely noticeable.

We had to scrub that floor too.  There was a cool difference in the flooring where the refinishing of the floors had created a slight elevation different in the wood. We also pulled out that lame-o drywall too.

We picked up the cabinets and sink at Ikea.  Dishwasher was a floor model that we got for half price at Sears.  Faucet was Amazon.  Labor was amazing friends who drove down from the DC area to install it all.  

 All the supplies waiting to go in...

Building the cabs

 Realized we ordered the counters too short and had to redo them...dammit.

I lurve the apron sink.  It's massively huge and holds everything.  It's bright white and shiny and lovely.  The cabinets are fresh, white, and not scary to go into now.

The faucet is a mixed bag.  I'm not overly thrilled with it style-wise.  It was a decent style at a price I could afford.  My friends installed it with the on-off lever in the center than off to the side and that was a totally happy accident as I love it.  What I do love about the faucet is its function.  The head pulls out and has two functions, a sprayer and a stream.  I originally wanted a more commercial style, but so many of them are so tall (like 24" to 36" tall) and lines were too modern.

 We Craigslisted the old sink cabinet.  

We have since installed the correct sized counters.  The only thing we have left to do is install the panel on the right hand side of the dishwasher.  It needs to be cut down, but we will get to that sometime.  

I also finally got to use the knobs I created.  I need another trip to Ikea to finish the rest of them, but that will happen the end of this week.

I LOVE my new kitchen.  It increases the functionality of the kitchen a lot, and the kitchen was already pretty functional.  I loved the look of the old stainless drainboard, but having the countertops is great.  And, I moved all the flatware to the drawer to the left of the sink and got a new organizer for the big drawer on the other side and that has made all the difference in the world.  

And the final money shot:

Here you can see the side panel that I need to install still.  And you can see that the sink is off center to the upper cabinets.  That will eventually get fixed when I install new uppers, someday.