Kitchen - Final Reveal

Technically, the kitchen is not complete, but it is complete enough for its debut.  We haven't really done any decorating yet, so it's still pretty bare bones.  Let's be honest, it will probably look like this for a very long time because it takes me forever to make decorating decisions. 

So as a reminder of what it looked like before:

Now for what it looks like now (cue the sound of angels singing):

This is definitely my favorite room in the house, next to Sims' room.

You can also see the new chandelier in the dining room in the above picture.

The barstools are my favorite seats in the house now. 

I am still in awe and can't believe that this is MY kitchen.  I actually enjoy cooking now.  On Monday, Sims sat at the counter and watched me put together dinner, and it was such a great feeling.  This kitchen has made all the difference!  Now it's time to start working on my cooking resolutions I made back in January.  I can't wait!

Granite

We now have granite countertops!  The kitchen is really coming along, and it finally looks like, well, a kitchen.  Wanna see?

We love this granite.  When I saw this particular slab, I knew this was it.  It's amazing how each slab can be so different, even in the same lot.  We definitely chose wisely because we love it in here!

Now it's time to pick all the details like pulls, knobs and lighting.  I think we've picked out the lighting for the kitchen.  I have fallen in love with a globe shaped chandelier that is going to be the center light for the room, and I can't wait to see it in my house!  We are still in the process of picking out the new lighting for the dining room and such.  Let me tell you - choosing all the details can be fun but hard.

Luxury is...

Drawer glides.

After living for so long with drawers that dropped little wood shavings into the cabinets below, it's the small things that get you really excited.

Of course, this is pretty exciting as well:

We had one small hiccup that has turned out to work in our favor.  One of the end cabinets was slightly damaged (barely a scrape) during shipping.  The damage was on the side where it would be visible.  Instead of replacing the piece, the cabinet company is giving us fake doors for all of the ends.  For FREE!  It may sound weird to have fake doors on the cabinets, but I assure you that they will be make this into a very upscale, finished-looking kitchen.  And what's even better is that our designer took care of everything, so we didn't have to hassle with it.  We love our designer!

Let There Be Light (and floors)

We are approaching the end of our second week of the kitchen remodel, and things are going well so far.  The first week they only worked 3 days, which was a blessing, since they had planned extra days for all of the surprises they could encounter during demo.  They didn't find any!  We had not been sure about the subfloor before starting, so we didn't know whether the hardwoods could be woven into the existing hardwoods in the dining room.  We were prepared for the worst and expected their to either be an issue with the height of the subfloor in the kitchen and/or sunroom.  We were pleasantly surprised!

When they took out the floors in the sunroom, which was an addition that the previous owners had built, we found that before the sunroom, there used to be a bump out in the wall of the kitchen, similar to a bay window.

It was interesting finding out something about our house from before we bought it almost 9 years ago.

We also had new lighting by the end of the first week.  Not all of the lighting has been installed or even chosen at this point, but we have 4 fantastic recessed lights.  The lighting is already better in there than before, and it's only going to get better.

We found our first surprise when the hardwood floor installer came this Wednesday.  They found that the floor joists in the kitchen and sunroom don't run the same direction, so the hardwoods won't be able to run in the same direction throughout.  That's fine with us.  Actually, I like the look of it.  I'm just thrilled that the floors can all be the same level!

Today they should be finishing up the floors, except for the sanding and staining, which is one of the last things that will be done.  They should have the floor boards all squished together (technical term) before they leave today, so they will look more finished than they do in the photo above.

We've already gotten a preview of the finished look because they finished weaving into the dining room floors.

Let me tell you, we're excited!

As for next week, the cabinets are going to be delivered on Monday.  On Thursday, the granite people will come to take their template for the countertops, and they will be installed the Thursday after that.  Next week, the room will definitely start looking like a kitchen again!

I know that we are only 2 weeks into this long process, but so far so good.  We seem to be doing fine without our kitchen, and our temporary kitchen already feels like our norm.  Hopefully, we can stay this patient for the next month!

Kitchen - Day 1

Here is the progress from the first day.

If you are wondering how we will eat in the next 6 to 8 weeks, our dining room is now our temporary kitchen.

Lots of microwave food and frozen meals are in our future.  And of course, eating out.

Kitchen - Before

The kitchen remodel has started as of yesterday!  In one day, they took out all the kitchen cabinets and about half of the floor. What a change!  Before I show you the pictures of what it looks like now, I wanted to show you some before pics.  I am going to show you a lot of angles of the kitchen and sunroom.  Some of these pictures are fairly dark, which is an honest representation of our kitchen.  That is one of many things that will be changing!

 

From the dining room

From the side door with the door to the living room open

For comparison purposes: same as above except door to living room closed and cute boy in center

From sunroom entry (Yes, that's a tent and tunnel in my living room. See cute boy above.)

Sunroom

From sunroom, looking into kitchen

So, why did I show you pictures of our sunroom?  Well, we are changing the flooring in the kitchen, sunroom and pantry to match the hardwood floors in the dining room.  It should warm up the sunroom a lot, and, hopefully, make it feel like another room in our house.  With the linoleum floors, it never felt really homey.

The kitchen is getting shaker style off-white cabinets with gorgeous white spring granite, which is a light colored granite with gray veins and reddish-brown accents.  The stained wood trim in the kitchen is going to stay.  We just can't part with it.  We haven't picked out the new paint color yet.  I can tell you that it won't be apple green!  I am so happy to see that go.

We are also getting all new lighting that extends farther than the kitchen and sunroom: canned lights and center light in kitchen, small chandelier over sink, replacing fans in sunroom  and living room and vaulted ceiling area of kitchen, chandelier in dining room, lights in foyer and hall, and front exterior lights. 

Big changes are happening around here!

Kitchens

I am taking a little detour in what I normally blog about (Sims).  I understand if you want to skip this post and just check back next time because today I'm going to talk about our kitchen.  Jason and I have finally decided it is time to do something about our sad, dated kitchen.  (Well, it's been time for a change since we moved in, but we are now going to actually do something about it.)
We're exploring all of our options: new cabinets or refacing.  We've even had a refacing company come to the house to give us an estimate.  He was there for a little over 2 hours as we picked out cabinet doors, paint color/stain, glaze for the cabinets, countertops, and hardware.  I was so sure about the cabinets, paint and glaze that we chose.  It was exactly what I had been imagining.  Or was it?

The next day I started looking at all my inspiration photos and realized that the ones I really love don't have the overally detailed painted cabinets with a glaze like we chose.  They are simple with no glaze at all.

I have always loved intricate details on cabinets (and on furniture for that matter), but it seems that my style is shifting.  This is what I call Darwinism of Style.  It's constantly evolving, and the more inspiration photos and design blogs I peruse the more it changes.  How do I pinpoint my ever-changing style to make such a big decision?  I'm not talking about a cute pair of shoes that I can wear this season but not wear again, if they don't fit my style next year.  This is a kitchen!  And kitchens aren't cheap, let me tell you. 

So we've decided to get a kitchen designer to help with the design part, which is what we were thinking about doing originally anyway.  Then we'll see.  In the meantime, I'll keep drooling over these pretty kitchen photos.

From Pinterest

From Pinterest

From Pinterest

From Pinterest

These are all from my Pinterest account, where you can see all of my kitchen pretties (plus other things).  If you're like me and have a huge notebook of torn out magazine pages that you keep for inspiration, Pinterest is a really nice way of doing that online.  Plus, you can look at what everyone else thinks is pretty, too.