Kitchen Renovation Reveal (Happy New Year!)

I hope you're celebrating the new year in style.  I know am....and I'm about to show you why.

We've been renovating our house for six months.  The dust, the chaos, the mess...

But it's all starting to be worth it.  We're getting to some real results, people.   Results that I feel good enough about to finally share with the world.

Around Thanksgiving, we decided to renovate our kitchen.  It wasn't part of the original plan, but then there was the microwave.  We special-ordered it, but when it came it was all dented.  It was going to take at least another three weeks to get a new one (thank you, living in the middle of nowhere).  Since we had some extra time on our hands, we decided not to skip over fixing all the stuff we were being too lazy to fix in the first place: the counters, the backsplash and the cabinets.

And, since the microwave actually took almost six weeks to come, we ended up having plenty of time to get the rest of our projects done.

Since we weren't planning on doing the renovation this year, we had to keep costs as low as we could.  The counter tops were definitely the biggest ticket item in the renovation, but we only spent about $500 on the rest of the renovation: the backsplash, the paint, etc.  If new counters aren't in your budget, there are always other options; you just have to think a little out of the box.  I tried stainless steel paint on my laundry counter tops last year and really liked how they came out.

Before

Now for some pictures. The previous owners had this two-tone yellow and white thing going on with the cabinets.  And some truly hideous orange splotchy paint.

They'd also replaced the door fronts with plexiglass and then used do-it-yourself stick-on car window tinting film in the darkest black they could find.  It was not a good choice.

  

This is what the stove looked like after almost TWO HOURS of scrubbing and scraping. 

 Someone had no idea how to install tiles. 

The worst part was their cabinet paint job.  They did absolutely no prep work.  They didn't even bother to clean them before they painted.  There were hairs and globs of food painted into the cabinets.  Memorialized for all of eternity under the pastel yellow latex.  Nasty.

After

So, I painstakingly sanded, scraped, cleaned, primed and painted them.  They're not perfect but they're SO much better than before.  We also pulled out the plexiglass and replaced it with some thin wood panels.

We tore out the old tile counters and their pink, green and purple stained grout and replaced them with Zodiaq quartz counters in white.

We pulled down the backsplash they'd made out of floor tiles that stuck out a full inch from the wall, and put in pretty glass tiles in a color I like to call Tiffany Blue.  It's subtle and chic and shiny.

 I love my cooking nook.  It makes me actually want to cook since my kitchen might be my favorite room in my house.

I also love my teapot.

Here are some proper before-and-after shots, so you can see just what a big difference it makes.

Do you see the window tinting film peeling off?

It's so bright and lovely.  And looking at these pictures reminds me just how far we've come.

Now, it's time to tackle the bathrooms.