The Kitchen: Makeover complete!

It should not surprise me that it has taken me just as long to acutally take photos and POST about my kitchen makeover than it did to do the work.  Having a clean kitchen, clean counters, sunlight, and a few moments to take some photos took a lot of collaboration to get all together :)

I will begin by saying this:  When I started this project there are SO MANY items of business that I did not consider.  Next time I do something this big I will make sure to write down the individual steps and be more realistic about how much time it will take me.  It took me four months to complete this - of course I am still a mom running and family and I couldn't work on it every day but I did work on it for about 10 hours a week I would say and then some weeks not at all because things were too crazy.  I am SO GLAD I DID THIS; likewise I am SO GLAD IT IS FINISHED!

One of the things that I liked about this house was the big open kitchen.  I spend a lot of time in the kitchen whether it is cooking yet another meal (it's amazing, no matter how many times I feed my children, they always get hungry again), doing homework, coloring, practicing letters, arts and crafts, eating together, you get the idea.  I think of it as our main gathering place as a family.  I did not like all the oak everywhere and so much brown and tan that was drowning me.  This wall of cabinets looked like it went on forever and ever into the distance...

So the first idea I had was to bump up these middle cabinets to create more of what looked like a built in hutch or desk area to break up that long line. So this 

became this (and was cleaned too:)

My husband kindly added the crown moulding around the top for me which makes a huge difference.  One of these days I will learn that 45 degree cut matching up angle business but not for now.  Then the bead board was added here as well as on all the sides of cabinets and ends everywhere else in the kitchen.  Then I sanded, removed doors and drawer fronts, and gave everything a primer coat of Gripper.  I am a huge fan of Gripper.  We are good friends.  It is so worth it to take your time and use this stuff.  

Then I set up a paint station in my garage and began spraying all the doors and drawer fronts with my sprayer.  At this point my kitchen looked like this a lot.  Just keeping it real for you here.  I could never ever do open cabinets.  Not having the doors on drove me crazy.  And other rooms of my house looked like this:

A little bit at at time, I just kept at it.  I had help from friends and finally finsihed everything, all the coats of paint, caulking, the underside, drying, drying and more drying, and then added the drawer pulls and knobs.  What a difference that makes!!! And I have been loving the change ever since.  I spent around $250 on the entire project (I didn't keep all receipts and I already had some of the knobs but I know it wasn't more than that).  I did spend a lot of my time which I know is valuable but I would not have been able to pay some one else to do it for me.  I'm proud of my work and so happy its over!  

before:

after:

before: 

after: 

There you have it.  My kitchen my style my budget.  In my dream world I would have replaced the counters with soapstone or quartz and put up a tile backsplash all the way around but I had a pretty tight budget.  I'm happy with how it turned out as you can tell by the one million pictures I just posted.  If you scrolled through all of them you deserve a prize. 

If I can do this anyone can.  Go ahead and try!  Start with a piece of furniture or something small; a mirror or photo frame.  have fun. 

sailing on, 

E