Read the sequence from the top before cutting, painting, or moving pieces.
Okay brace yourself for a slap in the face… well, really it is not that bad, until you start looking up close, and yes we are going to be looking up close (be sure to bring a face mask and hand sanitizer!)
I want to step back in time to show you the progression of our recent kitchen remodel. We’ve never really shown you the little updates we made, because a lot of them weren’t blog worthy.
So let’s show you what we saw when we walked through the house… (the house was only like 8 years old, so the cabinets are still relatively new, they are just clearly low-cost) So for us we were excited at the plainness of the kitchen cuz we saw a ton of potential, not so excited about the weeks worth of elbow grease it took to clean it. Here is the range and refrigerator side:
Below is the view looking into the laundry room and the garage door. The tile in the kitchen was in pretty good shape, even though we didn’t love the color (still don’t, but they are still alive and kickin’)
Behind the sink is a half wall with a bar top that we wanted to change. The dishwasher was low-cost and plain.
So that is the overall layout of the kitchen, now here are the basic elements… in all their grimy glory. I don’t mean to sound like a snot but buying this house was a HORRIFIC experience, the guy took 13 days to sign, we were homeless and running out of cash and one of his “excuses” was that he was having cleaners come clean the house… You tell me if you think the house was cleaned?
There was only one florescent ceiling light for the whole kitchen.
Here is a close up of the tile. It was so disgusting! I had the carpet cleaners steam clean the tile when they came for the rest of the house. It was the best $1o0ish bucks I’ve spent in a long time! The tile is like an extremely obnoxious fake version of Saltillo tile. And I have to admit I don’t love the original, so the ugly fake version was even worse.
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The countertops were peachy pink, stained with red koolaid, on. every. counter…. lovely.
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I don’t think that the fridge was ever cleaned, like ever…
Here is our lovely range. It reminds me of an Oreo… black -white- black (with an extra bit of white…) I guess they couldn’t decide if they wanted a black range or a white range, so they just threw in a little bit of both.
I guess they put the foil on a little too late? NASTINESS!
The microwave works well, especially with the inch of filmy grease covering it.
Here is the low-cost faucet with a really shallow sink. You can hardly get any dishes under the faucet to rinse them. I don’t know how long is has been since the faucet was cleaned, let alone the sink? Maybe a decade? Oh wait the house isn’t quite that old, 8 years? Sounds right.
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Well there you have it the UGLY truth. The first walk through of the kitchen before we touched it.
We had a LOT of plans for this kitchen after we scrubbed it within and inch of it’s life. But things had to change a bit, when our plans for the house changed. So we will talk more about this tomorrow!
Here are a few of the plans: None of them came to fruition, but I always enjoying thinking about how we could change spaces to make them work better. And I think it is interesting to see what could have been done.
A few rough sketches over the existing elevations:
A few renderings we made with different option or two:
Well, we’ll see ya tomorrow for more info!!
look at the first changes we made here, the subway tile back splash (and walkthrough) and how we updated the cabinets (also with a walkthrough!)!
