Well, it’s taken me a few days to get back here, but I am really excited about my kitchen plan!! After we got started last week, my kitchen project came to a standstill. I have discovered a sure way to bring in work for my self-employed husband. Start him on a project at home! As an electrical contractor, things have been a little, well a lot, slow. As soon as we start tearing the kitchen apart he gets work! Not complaining though. We lost a few days because there were things I needed him to do but as soon as he was free we got started again. I figured I’d work while he was available and blog about it later.
Before I lay out my “Re-use, Recycle and Re-do the Kitchen Plan”, I want to give you some background. My kitchen has had the refrigerator and stove on one wall and the dishwasher and sink on others. It was very spread out with a table in the middle of it all. The biggest drawback of the layout is that the outside door and doorway into my utility room/pantry were on the same side as my stove and fridge, with the fridge coming out into the doorway of the utility room. We didn’t start taking pictures ‘til the refrigerator was already moved, but you can see the space where it was. To the left of the ladder is the white doorway to the utility room. You can see that if you walked straight out of the utility room, you would hit the refrigerator. You had to go in and out of there on an angle.
So why did we start with the refrigerator? Because I have a special friend who knew we were using a refrigerator that was so old that it is “almond” and has definitely seen better days!
She shared an extra one she has had with us! It’s bigger, white and not falling apart, see it has both top and bottom handles! It went directly to it’s new spot in the kitchen.
Thank you special friend! I figured that if we were going to be moving the refrigerator anyway, that it would be a great time to start my kitchen project even if it was the beginning of November! The only obstacle would be getting hubby on board. I began by explaining why I wanted to move everything off of the stove/refrigerator wall and gave reasons he would agree with, like everything on that wall is basically in the pathway of the outside door to the utility room door. That made it hard when we brought in firewood. Then I followed with the idea that things would flow better with all the appliances close and on the same side. He liked both reasons, but still didn’t realize how easy this was going to be because our cabinets were mostly in sections already. We had put them together to work for us when we first got them. Not only that, but the cabinet sections were going to fit without ANY cutting! I had already measured. Hubby had to measure for himself. After measuring and re-measuring to be sure, he said “hey, this is going to be pretty easy!” Uh-huh, I already knew that! Glad to have you aboard honey! Then I laid out the plan for him in full:
1. Move refrigerator and stove almost directly across the kitchen to opposite wall.
2. Take out the cabinets that were on the opposite wall and replace them with the cabinets that fit from the other wall.
3. Re-paint cabinets black and walls beige. Buy new knobs for cabinets.
4.Put open shelving on the now empty wall. May have some cost here….
5. Re-do bakers rack and put it on the empty wall. May need more black spray paint.
6.Lay new tile on floor. Will need glue and grout.
7.Tile over formica countertops. Biggest expense is here for the tile, more glue and more grout.
8. Find a trim color and paint the trim….another expense, unless I win another contest and more free paint!
Should be pretty fast and easy, right? Well, the fridge is moved…
ME!!! It seems that our family always starts a project right before the holidays, like we need more pressure?!?!? Last year it was the utility room and bathroom. Those projects never made it to the blog, mostly because they aren’t/weren’t completely finished. The kitchen WILL be different! I’m sooo excited about it!! It’s been something that I’ve wanted to do for quite a while, so let me take you back to the beginning…
As I’ve mentioned before, we live in our basement, building “up” without taking out a loan. It’s been a MUCH longer process than we had ever anticipated. The economy going south hasn’t helped at all either. Anyway, we started out with a “this is only temporary” mentality and we didn’t put much thought into looks, only functionality. The longer we are down here, the more I want something that looks good! The kitchen started out with salmon-y pink, formica cabinets, which were given to us. Now, this was almost 10 years ago, so no one was sharing how to paint formica on their DIY blog, so we worked with what we had and I put up some hideous wall paper to coordinate. Several years later, we had to rebuild the cabinets around the sink because of a moisture problem. Unfortunately, we couldn’t match the old salmon-y counter top and had to get something new. Could have been a great opportunity….
However, Hubby decided to “surprise me” and bring home new counter tops! Yeah…trouble is we have different tastes. Since they were already cut and couldn’t go back, I again worked with what I had and went from “salmony-pink” to “grey-green”!
I look back know and call this my “what was I thinking phase?” At the time I did it I must have been happy but now I keep wondering, “what was I thinkin’?!?!?”. This is what I’ve had for the last 5 or 6 years….
So, last spring, when my DIY solar street lamp won at the DIY Club for March, part of the prize was 2 gallons of paint from Mythic Paint. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them…paint the kitchen and get rid of all that green! I had been toying with painting the cabinets black to coordinate with the counter tops and possibly repainting the walls a beige with gray undertones instead of yellow. These are the colors that I chose.
Cloud Burst Almond Biscotti
Then due to life happening over the summer and the thought that we might have to tear the sink cabinets out AGAIN, the painting the project went on hold. While googling black cabinets recently I found this picture :
and my project idea was re-born! This is Emily’s kitchen from Chatting at the Sky. I haven’t told her yet that I’ve had a picture of her kitchen on my laptop for my background screen for inspiration, but I will.
Well after finding her kitchen and falling in love, the project went from a simple painting the cabinets to a full blown “re-model” in my mind. The only problem? No money…. the more I thought about it the more I knew I could make it work, creatively, of course! I will be working with what I have, what I have been given or bartered for but will still have to buy some things. My original goal was to keep this under $100 out of pocket cash, but since I have decided on some tile and don’t want to give in on that, it will probably be more like $200. I am really excited about sharing my ideas on how to make this work so cheaply, but I’m also looking forward to getting some input! I hope you’ll follow along with me on this project, I’m sure I’ll need some encouragement as well as help! Like, what color trim paint would you use with the paint colors I’ve chosen? NOT “white”, we have basic white now and it doesn’t work for basement living…shows EVERYTHING!
I know I have some questions to answer and some comments to return, I’m not ignoring anyone, my laptop went down week before last and had to have everything re-installed. I’m still trying to get caught up!
If you’ve done a kitchen remodel and have any “what not to do” advice, I’d love to hear it! Tomorrow I will be sharing “The Plan”.
