Kitchen Renovation | Before + Plan

We have a 1950’s kitchen that has been slightly updated over the years by previous owners. Not that the updates they did were bad, but they were both already slightly outdated and just simply not our style.

Here is what the previous owners did in the kitchen:

• Installed a black granite countertop

• Moved the washer and dryer from the kitchen to the garage

• Painted the cabinets

• Painted over the wallpaper

Where to start on a redo of a kitchen? It can be overwhelming for sure. But rather than just focus on what we “should” do, we decided to focus on some big items that were most important to us for function and flow. Our main wants for the kitchen:

• Remove the wall between the kitchen and the living area

• Move the fridge so we can get a bigger one and make more counter space closer to the sink for a coffee station

• Update the countertops

• Paint the cabinets and walls

• All new hardware

• New tile backsplash and floor

• Add more electrical outlets (we only had one outlet)

• Add more lighting and update fixtures

We did have someone come and quote us what it would cost to do what we wanted and it was in the ballpark of $80,000! So, yeah, immediately we were out on that because we knew our budget was significantly smaller. So we sat down with our wants and discussed what we could do ourselves and what we could contract out to someone. When we got down to it, everything but the tile was within our capabilities with a lot of hard work. We set a budget for $10,000 and decided to go for it. Below are some before pictures of our kitchen in 2015 when we started this project.

Kitchen Before - View from dining/living areas.

Kitchen Before - View from kitchen to dining/living areas of the wall we want to remove and open up the kitchen to the dining/living areas.

View of wall to be removed - I didn’t get a good shot of it before we cleaned out the kitchen.

Kitchen Before - View from dining/living areas to where washer and dryer were before we moved in to the house. We plan to move the fridge here since there is already an existing water line to tap into for the water and ice maker in the fridge.