Finally. Yes, finally....

Our kitchen is finally mostly finished! I am so happy about it, that I can't even wait to show you pictures! Painting the cabinets was very, very time consuming. Each piece needed 3 coats of primer and a coat of paint. For the doors, we could only paint one side at a time so the 17 doors took F.O.R.E.V.E.R.!

There are 5 drawers that still need to be painted. Our walls and trim were off white, and we painted the ceiling and cabinets white, so we now need to paint the window trim and pantry door trim white so they will match. We also still need to install baseboards.
Soon, we will install new lights in there and continue the new flooring into the pantry.

I am very pleased with how it turned out. Remember, this isn't my dream kitchen. We did this on a major el cheapo budget (no high end products afforded here), but I am pleased with the results. Matter of fact, this was not EVEN in our plans (considering it happened just as my husband found a new job after being without one for 3.5 months!!), but when a leak happened and half the kitchen had to be torn out anyway we figured we might as well tear the rest out as well. Our homeowner's ins. gave us some money and we used that along with some of our own to do the remodel. I'll have to add up the cost of it, but I think we did really well. We had to buy several tools, but I won't add those in because now we have them and can use them elsewhere in the house. I think that we did what was right for the house. The housing market in this area has completely bottomed out. Since we bought right before this happened, we owe more than it is worth. Spending a lot of money in the kitchen wasn't an option, but the update is much appreciated by me!!

In case you don't recall, this kitchen was ripped down to the studs and built back up. We put in new wiring, new plumbing, tore down a non-load bearing wall, and built it all back up again! Aside from a little help from my dad and step-mom in the demo, plumbing, and wiring, I am so excited to say we did this ourselves! Considering neither of us have any experience in this type of thing, I'd say we did a pretty good job. My poor husband apologized on more than one occasion, saying this just wasn't his type of work....he is more the computer geek type! I'm proud of him. It wasn't easy, but he did the bulk of the work himself.

We took some pretty large breaks because doing this type of work isn't easy to begin with, but when you have no clue what you are doing, it is even harder. Not to mention stressful!

I'm sure you can remember what our kitchen looked like. Stuck in the 70s and never felt clean. The avocado green sink and faux brick painted bright red added just the right touch of Christmas cheer....LOL! I know the picture isn't great, but can you believe that it looks better than it did in real life. Trust me on this one!

And now, what I'm sure you really wanted to see anyway......

Before:

Here is Logan knocking the first hole in the wall. It also gives a close up look of the nastiness of the wall! I hated that brick!!

Here is what it looked like after the end of demo.

Drum roll please!! Here is what it looks like now......

And now for a side by side comparison:


As a side note: The cow cookie jar on top of the fridge was hubby's grandmother's and the teapots above the sink were my grandmother's.

Did you make it all the way to the end? Now I need some input from all of you. See how one wall is off white and the other is blue? We are trying to decide if we want the off white wall painted white or blue? I kind of like the two different colors together, but I also really love the blue color. What do you think?