For a while now, Nathaniel and I have been wrestling with our plans for our next renovation project on the house. We really want to start work on the exterior of the home (new windows and siding), but also like the idea of making our living space exactly how we want it. With a few bumps in the road and time constraints, it became apparent that the exterior might have to wait and a kitchen reno may be the best route. That being said, our big picture idea was to remove all the old cabinetry and countertops, add cabinets on the wall where our stove is, open up that same wall, and then add a bar top so we would have seating in the living room as well. This would create a nice open floor plan with ample storage and seating. Nathaniel drew up some plans of our dream living space, you’ll see below. We planned to do all the demo and install ourselves to save money, and so glad we did. Here’s our progress of phase 1!
Plans
This is the kitchen area when we moved into the house 4 years ago
And here’s the demo process!
Once all the old was out of the house, we started building the cabinets we purchased from IKEA. There were A LOT of boxes to go through when we started building the cabinets, but if you have time and patience I think going through IKEA is totally worth it. We saved a ton of money and they are really nice. So win, win on all accounts!
The whole demo process, and installing the cabinets took just a weekend, which compared to all the other projects Nathaniel and I have started and finished was a pretty fast turn around time! We had only one hiccup, and that was the delay of our butcher block countertops. So we ended up waiting three weeks or so for them to arrive. Once we they were delivered though, we installed them right away! I have to say, after about a month of living with them, I love them even more!
The last thing to complete, was the back-splash and that went up like a breeze (with the help of Nathaniel’s Dad, who happens to be an expert tile contractor 😉 ).
The kitchen turned out better than we could have imagined and was fairly painless when all said and done. It literally is a dream kitchen, and the cherry on top is of course the dishwasher!!
Our next order of business is to create the opening in the wall from the kitchen to the living room you see in the drawing plans. Nathaniel has been working on the logistics of this and we hope to get started on it soon!