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If You Can't Take the Heat, Renovate Your Kitchen! Check out Before and After Photos From our Kitchen Transformation

by on ‎08-11-2014 04:40 PM

My husband and I bought our first home in a bit of a rush. It was very small, very affordable, close enough to QVC and in a good school district. Our main concern was that we be settled somewhere before our oldest daughter started kindergarten.


Over time, we added another daughter and a dog to our family and our house went from cozy to cramped.



       


We decided to look for a home where my husband could have a garage, our kids could have a yard, and I could have a place to entertain. After two years of searching, we found it! We loved everything about our new home, except the kitchen, which had not been updated in a few decades. An unrenovated kitchen was fine with me! I knew that if the home had a new kitchen it would have cost a lot more and kitchens are very personal. I wanted to create my own dream kitchen.


This year, we decided to take the plunge. In order to create a larger space, we removed the wall between the kitchen and dining room. We also reconfigured the adjoining laundry and mudroom and changed the location of the entry from the garage. The construction process took four months. During that time, I cooked our meals on a card table in the basement. I learned that you can cook almost anything with a microwave and a toaster oven!


The Kitchen Before:



The Laundry Room Before:


      


Before the walls came down, I let the kids draw on them. They were so excited to do something so "taboo"!



       


This picture was taken on 4/8,  just 8 days into our renovation project. 



Here I am with my two daughters posing in our soon to be kitchen. At this point of the renovation I had mastered cooking on a card table in the unfinished basement! 



The next update we documented was 3 weeks into the project. We returned home from vacation to insulation! 


      


Here's a quick jump to week 5! 



My husband and I took a field trip to check out our soon to be cabinets! 



It took 4 months, but the wait was so worth it! Here are the after photos of our brand new kitchen: 




While I wanted the work and prep areas of the kitchen to be white, I wanted the wall visible from the living room to look less "kitcheny" and more like furniture. Our contractor and his team created a wall of built-in pantries from solid black walnut. The wood came from a property on Shelter Island, NY.


The owner, an amateur woodworker, had used trees on his property for his projects and had accumulated extra wood over several decades. My contractor took the ferry to the island to get the wood. He told the property owner (who has now retired to Florida) that he was going to create a special kitchen with the wood and would send him a picture of the end result.


I decided the cabinets should be very simple, with no exposed hardware so the focal point of the kitchen is the beauty of the wood, knots and all.




 





Our New Laundry Room! (With the new washer and dryer my husband surprised me with for my 44th birthday! -- That's my kind of romantic!) 


   


I've only been using the kitchen for a few weeks now and I'm not done organizing and decorating, but we have already had friends over several times and hosted a family party.  Although my new kitchen is much larger than the old one, I can clean it faster because everything has a place. Having white countertops helps too. If something is on the counter, it is easy to spot and wipe away.  Plus, I'm loving the convenience of having our everyday dishes so accessible on open shelves. Like many families, we spend a lot of time in the kitchen. It's so nice to finally have a space that functions well and feels like it belongs to us.


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