Kitchen Reveal

Remember how we started a major remodel on the kitchen way back in January?  And then we were all totally done by the kids' birthdays in April but I wanted to wait to blog about it until I had new rugs and a new garbage can and had all the new knobs on the cabinet doors, but it's August now and I have new rugs but none of those other things and I decided forget it lets just see some pictures!

You may remember the "original" BEFORE picture:

And then in January of 2010 we stripped the black away and had this:

And here is the newly remodeled 2014 version of our kitchen!!

In January I came home from work to find Bryce and my borther-in-law Mark ripping out the linoleum, YAY!!!

Then we tore out the grey back splash and the awful tiles that were glued down to the counter.  I was very disappointed to learn that they were easily removed, and I had lived with them all these years...

 Hey, lets tear down a wall!!

 Bunk beds!

 Then we started painting cabinets.  This was kind of miserable because it took about 4 coats.  We used a special filler paint first, to fill in the grain of the wood, between each coat we had to sand and wipe down and paint again.  We had cupboard doors all over the kitchen.  We had to live with this mess for about two weeks while we painted, sanded, and let the cupboards and doors dry.

 Then we removed the blue counter tops, and learned there had been pink ones underneath!  Man I'm sad we missed out on the pink ones...and as long as we are redoing counter tops we did the bathroom and our bedroom too...

 We got SO lucky with the flooring!  I wanted to match what we had put in the hallway but when we got to the store it was no longer being manufactured.  We looked all over trying to find something else that would work when we found a very dusty sample of our flooring.  The salesperson looked it up and there was enough left that we could do our kitchen, the stairs, and the downstairs hallway.  At a great discount!

 Look at those gorgeous floors!

 Here comes the counter top!

 Good bye BLUE!

 Bryce put this custom wood edge around the counter, you will see later it is stained to match.

 While I was at work Bryce did the back splash with this great glass accent.  

 Then, you know, no big deal, he just whipped out a custom made bar from scratch.  I was so impressed, the next house will have ALL custom Bryce cabinets!

 These drawers are so great for holding all our little appliances, and they pull all the way out for easy access to everything.

 We put in a new faucet, so fun!  New to us sink coming soon...

 And another close up of the tile.

And look at this gorgeous half wall!  We took out the top of the old wall and then Bryce added a top to it and then decorated the existing post (on the right) and made a faux matching post (on the left).  It looks like it has always been this way.  And the kitchen now feels so open and bright and I can see the kids playing in the living room.  We should have done it as soon as we moved in! 

We have really been enjoying out updated kitchen, such a huge improvement from the original black cabinets and blue counter tops.  The bar is so much bigger than our old one we can easily fit five people around it and I can cook and bake at one end while the kids play at the other, or I can just have lots of stuff piled on it. Oh and we found our new bar stools at a neighbor's yard sale for $30, whoo-hoo!