Kitchen Makeover

After living in our house for nearly 6 months we have finally finished our kitchen makeover!  100+ hours went into it, but we love how it turned out.  Excuse the many details in the post - I am documenting this for my own sake. Things we did include:

-remove wall paper border

-remove fluorescent light fixture over island and add new pendant lighting

-new breakfast area lighting

-paint over the previous blue wall with a greige color

-new stainless range

-new stainless microwave

-new granite countertops

-new stainless sink and faucet

-install marble mosaic backsplash

-paint cabinets white

-add stainless hardware to cabinets and drawers

-install undercabinet lighting

The kitchen was not staged when the previous owner put the house on the market.  The owner didn't even bother clearing the countertops (or cleaning the house for that matter) for the photos.   I imagine if the previous owner had just cleaned the kitchen up before taking pictures that she would have gotten a higher price for the house.  This is not my dream kitchen in the original listing photo:

The blue sailboat wallpaper was one of the first things removed after we moved in.  The fluorescent overhead lighting was changed out too and replaced with pendant lighting over the island.  We also replaced the home's original 18-year-old stove with a convection range. 

Next came the new blue sapphire granite countertops with a brushed stainless steel faucet and sink. The plumbing was a huge pain as we did that ourselves. 

Then we painted walls a greige color (grey with beige undertones), called Sherwin Williams "Amazing Grey," (Nate almost vetoed the color based solely on the name because it was perhaps an unintentional pun for "Amazing Grace") and installed a new stainless steel over-the-range microwave, as the old microwave left food in the back of the microwave cold. The backsplash took several weekends between cutting the Crema Marfil polished marble with a wet saw (which was more difficult because the pattern we wanted needed many of our 2"X2" mosaic tiles cut on the diagonal), putting the tile up in the correct pattern, sealing, grouting, and caulking. This picture is a little silly in that I had put tape on the doors and drawers of the cabinets to get an idea of what the hardware we were thinking about would look like. 

 

It would have been easier to not have had a pattern on the backsplash and not to have pencil railing, but we love the end result.  We also could have saved a considerable amount of money without the pencil rail, but oh well. It would have also been easier to have used glass mosaic tiles or something else easier to cut, but we aren't that huge of fans of the glass mosaic.  At least 40 hours went into the backsplash.

When my parents visited, we refinished the oak and oak veneer cabinets in a Benjamin Moore "Cloud White" color.  We first removed the doors, cleaned and sanded all surfaces to remove the gloss and built-up dirt, and then primed everything.  The countertops were a mess in the days leading up to Thanksgiving with all the food preparation that needed to be done.  It didn't look nice to have doorless cabinets, but it was incredibly easy to get things off the shelves.  After bonding primer went on:

After the first coat of white paint:

Many hours were spent in the garage painting both sides of the doors as well.  

After the doors were remounted, we used a template to mark where holes needed to be drilled for the hardware.  After drilling, we installed the brushed stainless steel handles/pulls from Ikea on both the drawers and cabinets.  Last was the undercabinet lighting that we managed to get plugged in in the same outlet where the microwave plug is hidden and another plug got connected behind the fridge, so that all the wiring is out of sight. Here is the end result of the kitchen:

In total, here is the before shot:

And after, from mostly the same angle:

It is both a relief and strange to be done.  Now it's time to just enjoy our updated kitchen and find something else to spend our hours doing.  For me, my new project is trying to finish Lydia's felt applique stocking before Christmas.