My First Kitchen Renovation

Hubby and I started planning this kitchen renovation right before kid #2 arrived.  I remember how sneaking out to Home Depot for an hour to meet with the kitchen designer was such a big thrill.  We “finished” the kitchen about 12 months later, when I was pregnant with kid #3.  And then we sold the house.  Boo!  We moved to our current house because it has more  room for 5 people, but nowhere near as nice a kitchen.  The other bummer is that I lost most of the pictures from this project.  So please excuse these poor photos.  After my computer crashed I started using Carbonite, and it has saved my butt a few times.  I wish I knew about it back then.  Maybe I will stalk my family to see if they have any pictures because these don’t do it justice.

Oh how I miss that kitchen.  We couldn’t afford to do the kitchen in our new house when we moved it, but I don’t regret renovating the one in our old house because that is what made it sell so fast — 10 days on the MLS in 2009 when nothing was selling in New Jersey.

Kitchen Entry

Isn’t that floor terrible?  You should’ve seen the wallpaper — it was worse.   After the remodel we sold the white refrigerator on Craigslist for $200.  Putting in the archways was actually pretty easy.  I bought arch forms online, but haven’t been able to find the retailer since.  It’s too bad because I would highly recommend him and have never seen anything like it elsewhere.  

View from the other direction.   I installed the floor all by myself while my girls slept.  I had never done it before and it really wasn’t bad.  (My current hardwood floor install can be found HERE) I refused to have a transition of any kind.  We took the wall down between the kitchen and dining room to make one large room so I wanted the floor had to be consistent.

The old cabinets were solid.  They just weren’t where I wanted them.   So I reused 3 lower cabinets to make the island.  I simply painted them to match the cabinets.  If I still lived there I would put beadboard on the sides because it’s too plain.

Window / Sink View

The dishwasher was the only thing that stayed in this picture, and in the same place even. I had replaced the dishwasher and range when I first moved in.  I always planned on putting in a back splash, but we sold the house before I had the chance.

Taking the Wall Down Between Kitchen and Dining Room

One of my dilemmas about our current kitchen is whether or not to take the wall down between it and the dining room.  It was a no brainer here because there was NOTHING on the kitchen side of the wall.  These rooms were a lot smaller, so combining them made a huge impact.  I was adamant about the floor being seamless though, which is why I put hardwood down in the kitchen.  I am older and wiser now, so I don’t think I would do it again.  Hardwood floors looks great in a kitchen, but they aren’t practical.

I don’t have any pictures of the wall coming down, unfortunately.  But I have this one gem of me where you can see in the background what is left of the wall after we took it down.

My daughters loved having all the extra room to run around after we took the wall down.  I love how the floor turned out.  It’s a pretty seamless transition.  The girls are sitting right where the old floor meets the new floor.  You can also see the repositioned heating vent in the middle of the floor.  Don’t worry, it won’t look so weird once the island is installed.

In this one you can see the ceiling was patched where we removed the soffit.  We were freaked out when we took off a portion of drywall one day, on the wall on the left, because the bathtub was behind there at shoulder height.  Ahh, the joys of a split-level home.  We had an electrician install the recessed lights, but later my brother and I had to move a few of them around because they were not lined up properly.  It wasn’t a huge deal because we were going to do a beadboard ceiling anyway.  It would have been great if I had some shots of me pregnant with kid #3 while installing ceiling planks.  We should have just used sheets, but again with the seams, so we used tongue and groove MDF beadboard.  It was a pain in the butt to install. 

This is the view from the dining room looking into the kitchen.  And yes, they are taken from the same spot at the same angle.  Crazy, huh?  The windows and blinds stayed the same, but not much else. Lol.  Actually we replaced the crank window in the kitchen with a double hung window, so I guess that’s different too.  But in the same spot.

We bought the counter-depth fridge at the Sears Scratch & Dent Outlet near our house.   I think at that point I realized we were redoing this kitchen for someone else, so I was glad to save a few bucks.  It’s funny, I just had to have that vintage-look phone.  Little did I know at the time that Smart Jr would get her first cell phone in 2nd grade.  Oh and that trash can was what we used for recycling, but it was not a permanent solution.  The cabinet next to the dishwasher had a pull out trash can (which I can’t wait to have again in our this house.)

That about covers it…

Our renovation included:

*We did everything ourselves except for some electrical work and countertops/sink*

• Removing the wall between the kitchen and dining room
• Extending wall that now has refrigerator
• Removing the soffit from two walls
• Installing matching hardwood floor with NO t-joints or transitions
• Installing bead board ceiling (mainly because I wanted to hide the patchwork from where we took down the wall)
• Installing arches in the doorways and removing all the existing trim around doors
• Drywall/tape/spackle/paint
• Relocating electrical and installing recessed lighting (had an electrician do, but ended up moving the recessed lights afterwards myself)
• Designing the new layout (we ordered Kraftmaid Cabinets from Home Depot)
• Installing the cabinets (hubby helped with only with the cabinet above the fridge)
• Installing crown molding and floor molding
• Building the island using the old cabinets, painted with color match paint
• Installing black granite sink, instant hot water heater, garbage disposal, faucet (hubby did all that)
• Modifying and installing the black counter top in the dining area
• Re-routing 2 heating vents (one now comes up through the floor near the island, the other comes out through the toe kick of a cabinet)
• Venting range hood up through the roof, which had previously been in the soffit, venting out the exterior wall (all hubby)
• Installing a new window and trim (old window was crank out, I was not a fan)