Before and After Kitchen Renovation

This one’s been a long time coming… so here it is: Finally, the Before and After Kitchen Renovation!

20 freaking months! 20 loooong months with a whole lot of life lived in between. That’s how long we’ve been working on this kitchen. I’m calling it done for now but there’s still a few things I’d like to do… I’ll tell you all about that in a minute. First, let’s look at what we have been able to do!

If you know me, you know I love an old home… at least I thought I did. Turns out, I’d really just like a home that LOOKS like it’s from the 60’s. The 60 year old wiring and asbestos ridden ceilings I could probably do without.

So, while I did love this kitchen before…I honestly did. I knew it had more potential. And of course, the popcorn ceiling had to go.

Here’s a few before pictures so you can see what we were working with… and I gotta warn you. These before pictures are bad. Like last minute thought, snapped on my phone bad.

So here’s everything we did in our Before and After Kitchen Renovation:

First, we replaced the old appliances with new stainless steel ones. If I had to do this again I would NOT choose stainless steel. It is so ridiculously hard to keep clean! So if you come to my house any time between now and the time my children move out in about 15 years, just expect them all to be covered with little fingerprints. I know they look clean in these pictures but it’s only because I airbrushes all the fingerprints out.

Next, we removed the shelving unit that served as a half wall separating the dining room and kitchen. That alone opened up the space SO freaking much.

Then, we took down the popcorn ceilings. I’ve since done this to my living room as well and I’ve decided that this topic deserves its very own blog post. So, stay tuned for that coming soon.

Now, I’m going to say something that might make some of you physically ill… I apologize, but it’s just the facts. I don’t hate wood paneling. No really… you could even say I like it. It’s just who I am as a person. I’ve accepted it and this whole thing will be a lot easier if you can learn to accept it to. All this to say, we removed all the wood paneling in the kitchen, but I don’t think it was necessary and sometimes I even miss it a little.

Phew. Glad that’s out of the way. Moving on…

Let’s talk cabinets. We replaced the old cabinets with IKEA cabinets. We also added a custom island to the middle of the kitchen. I do like them and the installation process was pretty simple, although time consuming and a little tedious at times. The hardware is from Home Depot.

I do have one MAJOR ISSUE with these cabinets though- they are dangerous AF when installed according to the manufacturers instructions. About 11 months after we installed these cabinets (100% correctly, mind you), one of the units fell off the wall and sent us to the emergency room with my 6 year old daughter.

The unit pulled right out of THREE STUDS! It was so scary and we are SO SO lucky that my husband was there to grab most of the weight of the cabinet and that her injuries weren’t more severe. It honestly makes me sick to my stomach to think about how bad it could have been had my husband not been standing exactly where he was.

IKEA immediately replaced the damaged cabinets and we are still working with IKEA’s insurance company to resolve this. We have since installed additional hardware (not from IKEA and not included in their installation instructions) to ensure that this NEVER happens again.

After taking these additional steps I am totally confident that the cabinets are safe. I would use IKEA cabinets again in the future but only with added hardware and additional steps to ensure that they are secure.

The countertops are quartz, also from Home Depot and I love them SO SO much!

Next came the new flooring and retexturing and painting all the walls. We pulled up the old tile and had new LVT (laminate vinyl tile) installed. My favorite part about this flooring is that it has no grout lines so cleaning is super easy! And it’s not freezing cold like ceramic tiles.

After ripping off the paneling, the walls were a mess and such a pain to get all smooth and textured! And to be honest, I don’t love LOVE the white. I do like the way it looks, but much like my stainless steel appliances, I can’t quite seem to keep little grubby fingerprints off them for very long. Oh well, I’ll have plenty of time to enjoy a clean house when my babies are gone. And anyway, I don’t think any other color would look good in this space (aside from the aforementioned wood paneling, but I can’t keep living in the past!) so I’ve resigned myself to constantly wiping walls in between wiping butts and booger’s and playing hide and seek.

Finally, the lights. I had the hardest time picking out light fixtures to go above the island. And don’t tell my husband this, but I’m still not 100% sold on the ones we have now. They were a nightmare to install so he’ll probably want to kill me dead if I decide to change them.

The pendant lights don’t put off much light so we have plans to add recessed can lighting, as well. Unfortunately, we have radiant heat in our ceiling which means there are cooper pipes covering the entire ceiling, just above the drywall so we are unable to install the lights until we replace the radiant heating system with a new furnace… to the tune of about $12,000.

Oh! I got a wine fridge, too! I’m obsessed.

This is where we’ve stalled. Mostly due to budget, honestly. My husband’s father was diagnosed with cancer in 2017. As a result, he was unable to work and was at risk of losing his home. Instead of having to go through all of that on top of dealing with cancer, we decided to buy his house so that he could remain living in it. That second mortgage really cuts into the Before and After Kitchen renovation remodeling budget.

Sadly, he passed away in October. We miss him dearly and are so grateful for all the memories we have with him.

Add funeral expenses and an unexpected knee surgery to our already dwindling budget and well, here we are.

So what’s left for this Before and After Kitchen Renovation? Aside from the recessed lighting and maybe a little more decor…there’s the backsplash. For now, I used tile stickers (found HERE.) which honestly are amazing if you don’t have the budget for the real deal. But I definitely plan on updating it in the future. I want something more simple. I don’t hate the stickers, but they’re a little to busy for my taste.

I’m so happy with the progress we’ve made and this before and after kitchen renovation still blows my mind! Looking back at these before pictures it’s hard to believe this is even the same room!

You can look back at all the before pictures of our house, HERE if you’re interested.

The post Before and After Kitchen Renovation appeared first on Rad + the rest.