Kitchen Remodel!
When we originally bought our house, the kitchen was closed in, dirty, and completely outdated. Although the woman we bought the house from was nice, she did not take care of the house or the entire property. She had 7 mini horses, yes you read that right, 7 mini horses on our 3 acres and it wasn't properly kept up.
The trees, bushes, and grass were built up and the pond had overgrown trees all around and inside of it. The barn where the horses lived was disgusting and looked like it had never been cleaned out or maintained. We knew that we were in for a huge project on just the outside, but that would have to come after we moved in. But to move in, we needed to make the house livable.
Daniel and I are both allergic to cats (me deathly) and the previous owner had one. There was cat hair literally everywhere. When I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. Inside all the cabinets, outside of all the cabinets, the windows and blinds, the door frames, closets, bathroom, carpets, and inside the stove and refrigerator. I basically sneezed the entire time I was in the house even after we got all the carpet out and traces of cat hair.
The cabinets in the kitchen were the typical orange oak that you see often in houses. The last kitchen we had, I couldn't stand the cabinets. They were dark brown and ugly, and I knew that I was going to paint the new ones white as soon as I saw them.
The flooring in the kitchen was your basic linoleum with normal wear and tear, but we knew from the get go that we were going to do something different. When we pulled the carpet from the living room and hallway which both meet at the kitchen, we tried to rip out the kitchen floor, but unfortunately, it was glued down like I've never seen before. It was coming up in splinters so to make things easy on us, we decided to lay down our new flooring over. There is about 1 1/2 inch of height difference in the kitchen than in the living room and hallway, but we put transitions in to make it not that noticeable.
Originally I wanted to continue the hardwood into the kitchen and be done with it, but Daniel being the remodeling expert that he is, knew that wood floors and kitchens aren't the best idea when it comes to leaks and such since he has to repair and renovate kitchens. I knew he was right, so we decided on tile, because I can't stand linoleum with every fiber of my being! I knew that if we're remodeling the whole house from top to bottom, we might as well go all out and do something that will not only look beautiful and updated, but can get us more bang for our buck if we ever decided to sell.
I mentioned in my last post that I wanted marble, but it is honestly so expensive. Daniel and I looked for alternatives and he found the most perfect tile! It's a 24x12 porcelain faux marble tile. I was completely in love when he brought a sample home. It was definitely the one.
We bought the tile at Home Depot. The price was $2.48 a sq ft. and each box had 8 tiles in it measuring 16 sq ft per box. I can't remember the exact amount we ended up buying, but there were a lot of boxes and they were super heavy!!
We laid down cement backer boards first. I'm not sure if we got them from Home Depot or Lowes or even the brand we got, but we got about 30 of them like this. Daniel's dad and our friends Joe and Robby helped Daniel tackle that part. They helped us out so much and we are soooo eternally grateful for it!
All during this, I was doing my own project until I could get my hands on the cabinets. The master floor needed some TLC and I'll share that for another post this week!!
After we were able to walk on the tile and the grout had set, I took all of the cabinets off the hinges and sanded them enough to make the "shiny" coat gone. I was covered in sanding dust for weeks! Since I was doing this on my own (and I've never done it at all before), I did a little bit of research from pinterest and went to work!
The trees, bushes, and grass were built up and the pond had overgrown trees all around and inside of it. The barn where the horses lived was disgusting and looked like it had never been cleaned out or maintained. We knew that we were in for a huge project on just the outside, but that would have to come after we moved in. But to move in, we needed to make the house livable.
Daniel and I are both allergic to cats (me deathly) and the previous owner had one. There was cat hair literally everywhere. When I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. Inside all the cabinets, outside of all the cabinets, the windows and blinds, the door frames, closets, bathroom, carpets, and inside the stove and refrigerator. I basically sneezed the entire time I was in the house even after we got all the carpet out and traces of cat hair.
(This is the actual picture of the kitchen from the listing on the realtor website.)
The cabinets in the kitchen were the typical orange oak that you see often in houses. The last kitchen we had, I couldn't stand the cabinets. They were dark brown and ugly, and I knew that I was going to paint the new ones white as soon as I saw them.
The flooring in the kitchen was your basic linoleum with normal wear and tear, but we knew from the get go that we were going to do something different. When we pulled the carpet from the living room and hallway which both meet at the kitchen, we tried to rip out the kitchen floor, but unfortunately, it was glued down like I've never seen before. It was coming up in splinters so to make things easy on us, we decided to lay down our new flooring over. There is about 1 1/2 inch of height difference in the kitchen than in the living room and hallway, but we put transitions in to make it not that noticeable.
Originally I wanted to continue the hardwood into the kitchen and be done with it, but Daniel being the remodeling expert that he is, knew that wood floors and kitchens aren't the best idea when it comes to leaks and such since he has to repair and renovate kitchens. I knew he was right, so we decided on tile, because I can't stand linoleum with every fiber of my being! I knew that if we're remodeling the whole house from top to bottom, we might as well go all out and do something that will not only look beautiful and updated, but can get us more bang for our buck if we ever decided to sell.
I mentioned in my last post that I wanted marble, but it is honestly so expensive. Daniel and I looked for alternatives and he found the most perfect tile! It's a 24x12 porcelain faux marble tile. I was completely in love when he brought a sample home. It was definitely the one.
We bought the tile at Home Depot. The price was $2.48 a sq ft. and each box had 8 tiles in it measuring 16 sq ft per box. I can't remember the exact amount we ended up buying, but there were a lot of boxes and they were super heavy!!
We laid down cement backer boards first. I'm not sure if we got them from Home Depot or Lowes or even the brand we got, but we got about 30 of them like this. Daniel's dad and our friends Joe and Robby helped Daniel tackle that part. They helped us out so much and we are soooo eternally grateful for it!
I love the look of light colored tile with the dark grey grout in between. We went to Lowes and picked out the perfect shade. I wanted to go with Charcoal, but Daniel wanted a lighter color in Silver, so we compromised between the two an ended up with the color Pewter. I'll have to ask him, because I'm not sure if we got sanded or unsanded but this is the brand of grout that we used.
We used the 1/4" tile spacers as well.
All during this, I was doing my own project until I could get my hands on the cabinets. The master floor needed some TLC and I'll share that for another post this week!!
After we were able to walk on the tile and the grout had set, I took all of the cabinets off the hinges and sanded them enough to make the "shiny" coat gone. I was covered in sanding dust for weeks! Since I was doing this on my own (and I've never done it at all before), I did a little bit of research from pinterest and went to work!
After I painted the cabinet bases with a regular White semi gloss paint, I was able to hang the doors back up. I spray painted the doors outside in a well ventilated area!! I did about 2 to 3 coats and let them dry completely between each layer! I used this brand of spray paint!
Once we got done with the cabinets, we were able to knock out a double window and put our brand new outswing french doors that we bought from Lowes!
Finally, we were seeing progress!! The next part was the most tedious part of all!! Poor Daniel did this all on his own and I couldn't be more grateful for all the hard work he put into it.
The ceilings in the entire house were popcorn texture and we hated it! It was also dirty and there was stains from where previous leaks had been. Luckily, our roof is only 3 years old, so we're good for a while! Anyways, the texture wasn't what Daniel or I wanted, so he literally scraped down ALL of the ceilings in the entire house and mudded, then sanded some more, then did some more mudding, then sanded some more.
His poor arms were so sore from it, but we're both super happy with how they all turned out! They are flat and smooth and they look so beautiful and updated!
We both painted the ceilings as well (with Daniel doing most of it). It was a typical Pure White Ceiling paint from Behr. Behr is only sold at Home Depot stores.
The color we painted in the kitchen was a neutral grey. The kitchen, living room, and hallway are all the same grey color. We used mulitple greys throughout the house. The color we used was called Classic Silver. We got a 5 gallon bucket of it.
We of course painted the base boards and put down new quarter round moulding throughout the house and those were painted the same pure white as the trim.
The light fixtures were outdated and ugly so Daniel replaced the one above the stove with an awesome Antique Bronze LED light. The one over the sink is still the same, but we're in search for something nice that will go with the rest of the kitchen. The chandelier over the table was white and had 5 globes over each light bulb. It wasn't the prettiest and we do plan to eventually replace it with this amazing one that I've had my eye on, but for now, Daniel bought this metal spray paint in the Dark Bronze color to match all the fixtures throughout the house! It looks so good and looks new!
The kitchen table that we are using was an antique store find! It was only $15 and it was completely taken apart! We did some research on the design and the workings on it and found out that it's a writing desk from the 1940's!
Daniel and I brought it home and put it back together (Daniel duplicated the bottom left wood piece and the long board in the middle to help it stand up and be sturdy). We sanded down the top and were back and forth on the stain color. We ended up using a water based stain and we hated the way it looked so we sanded it down some and ended up loving the color it was left with. We painted the rest of it white for that awesome farmhouse style we love so much.
(This was it when we brought it home! We definitely got a steal that day!)
In the picture you see of after we finished it, the side that's facing the wall actually has a drawer in it which I keep the extra place settings and coasters. We loved the way it turned out.
At the same antique store we got the table at, Daniel and I found the metal base to an old Singer sewing machine. We both fell in love with it because we both wanted to clean it up, add a wooded top to it and make it our coffee cart!!
We had been looking at different hardware for the cabinets but we just couldn't seem to decide on one! We wanted bronze long pulls, but then I wanted clear and bronze crystal knobs. But we just couldn't find any that were good and hardy materials. It's really funny because Daniel took the metal spray paint in Bronze and sprayed the knobs and pulls that were on the cabinets when we bought the house! They look amazing and like new! Plus, it saved us a lot of money there as well!!
This is the final look at the hard work we've done! We still have some touch ups to do and some decor to hang, but all in all, I think we kicked butt on our kitchen remodel! One of the best things that I love about it the most, is that we designed it all and we did it all by ourselves. Even though it took 4-5 months to actually move in after we closed, I wouldn't have done it any different.
Don't forget to comment and let me know what you think about our amazing transformation! Also, keep checking back for the other renovation posts I plan on putting up!!
-Sarah
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