befores & not quite afters: kitchen

The kitchen was yucko from top to bottom.
before:

The cabinets were basically wood grain wall paper over the top of particle board and the counter tops were formica in a faux butcher block finish. While I wasn't in love with all the finishes, I have to say that I was thrilled to have some counter space. The first place we lived in had the world's tiniest counter and I had to use our kitchen table to prep things.

not quite after:

We added a ton of lighting to the kitchen. Micah is obsessed with lighting. We have 4 pots, 2 pendents, & 2 under cabinet lights which I have to admit while we were shopping for lighting I thought it was overkill. Our kitchen is not large by any means so I didn't understand why we needed so much, but now that it's all in I love all the lighting. All the overheads are on a dimmer & the pendents are on a dimmer with our chandelier which is nice to control the mood. (Or just "hide" the fact that I haven't wiped down the counters & there is a jelly blob waiting to be taken care of.)

When we first started the kitchen we just took the door off of the cabinet over the peninsula and used it as open shelving, but honestly it was a pain to get anything out of the cabinet. I had to climb on top of the counter to get anything off the top shelf. Then we had a pendent light broken by a family member trying to get a bowl off the shelf and that pretty much made up our minds that we were going to just lose the cabinet. Micah made a metal bulletin board for me out of stainless & while he hates how messy it always looks I love it. Whenever we have people over they always spend time looking at the board. I even have a girlfriend who gives me pictures specifically to put up there. (She actually did a little cheer when they "made the board" it was so funny!)

Our counters are my fav thing in the kitchen! They are concrete and Micah made them. I love the color & texture of the concrete. We originally were going to go with marble because a friend of Micah's had this amazing piece of marble that he was just going to give us! Unfortunately, with that marble there was going to be a huge seam right above where our dishwasher is. Free is fabulous, but I knew I'd hate the seam so his friend generously took us to this amazing granite/marble warehouse to let us choose a slab (at cost...again amazing!). I found that I have extremely expensive taste. The marbles & granites that I like have a lot of texture & movement which translates to $$$$$! It didn't make sense for this place for resale plus we couldn't afford it anyway. So Micah came up with doing a concrete counter top. He made the whole thing on our back porch (huge mess, but SO worth it!) and a couple of friends helped him install it. Love it!!

I wanted a tile back splash and Micah was able to score a bunch of white subway tile (for free!) so that made that decision.We decided to take it from the edge of the counter all the way around to the refrigerator. I'm really glad we did, it looks so clean and fresh.

Our cabinets are from IKEA. We shopped around a lot for cabinets and I really liked the look of the IKEA ones but the bottom cabinets were on legs. Ummm...can you say cleaning nightmare!?! I was picturing the dust dinosaurs that would reside under the cabinets and that's just gross! So Micah build boxes for the bottom cabinets to sit on so they look just like regular cabinets. I got the handles from a markdown bin at Home Depot. On the back side of the peninsula there was a cabinet so we picked up two extra cabinet doors to install as dummies so they didn't stick out. I'm really happy with our cabinets and I would highly recommend them. They have the no-slam (not really sure what it's called) things on the doors & the drawers. They wipe down super easy and they are very budget friendly. We'll probably use these same cabinets again.

Ahhh...the floors. I think these are our best freebie ever! We scored these from a 1930's farmhouse in a nearby town. The wood is a type of fur that you can't find anymore. Micah installed them & sanded them down. We had planned on staining them dark & distressing them. Everyone who saw the floors all sanded and ready to go thought we were nuts to distress these amazing floors. However, we were totally right to distress them. Yes, the floors would be have been beautiful but the first ding or dent would have completely ruined them. Let's face it a family lives here and there are going to be lots of dings and dents. Distressing the floors made it so all of our "oops" added more character. I for one have added a lot of character to the floor and am thankful every time I drop something that I don't need to stress out.

On the to do... white wooden blinds for the window (to match the living & bedrooms) and some sort of rug or mat to stand on while prepping at the counter. Super close to finished!!!