The Kitchen: from the beginning until now

Our kitchen was a nightmare when Jon moved in. As mentioned in a previous post, there were three types of wallpaper in addition to horribly stained carpet, a tiny oven, and a refrigerator that did not work. After spending several hours stripping the wallpaper, our next project was finding a new refrigerator. Once we brought the fridge home, we realized it was too tall for the cabinets. So, time to get busy.

Jon, who is always looking to make more work, decided we might as well make it a day project and open up the back walk and push the refrigerator the extra two or three inches back.

There was also a soffit above the cabinetry that Jon removed in order to move the cabinets up. Basically Jon removed the soffit, unscrewed the cabinetry 98%, asked me to help hold the cabinets up, removed the last 2% of screws, pushed the cabinets up, reinstalled the screws, and we were set! After some touch up and a few layers of paint, it was as good as new.

Next, we painted the room blue. Oops.

The next project was removing the carpet and putting in new floors. We wanted to keep the floor light, and Jon came home one morning with bamboo samples. He was very enthusiastic with the option so I consented. Similar to the wall color, I wish I could go back and rethink my choice. Basically I like my choices much better if I use inspiration pictures off of the internet. Here is the carpet with some bamboo laying on top.

So, here is the floor before, during, and after:

In this after shot you can see that we began working on yet another project: making room for a new oven. Our first oven, which came with the house, was a mere 22 inches (I believe). We were wanting a middle of the road oven hopefully looking to find a good sale. Finding a 22" oven proved easier sad than done. Jon actually found a wonderful deal purchasing a floor sample at Lowe's. The only negative: it was 27." Therefore Jon needed to expand the cabinet opening and piece back the cabinets underneath and above the oven. This took weeks. Running the electricity for the oven revealed to Jon the next project: rewiring the entire electrical circuit. Anyway, back to the oven.

Out with the old, in with the new:

As seen in that last picture, Jon went ahead and removed the soffit from across the top of these cabinets which also called for putting in a new, shorter lamp above the sink and replacing the stove fan. Then, we painted the ceiling (we=Jon :).

Jon also tried his hand at more cabinetry by creating a cookie sheet slot under the oven to the left. You can see the open spot three pictures ago. I'm really please with his work.

Since these pictures, I have painted the corner cabinet (white), Jon has fixed the shelf that was to the left of the oven and I painted it white, the back door has been painted, and so has most of the trim (I have to do the windows and the doorway to the basement). After those quick fixes, we just have to find a dishwasher and replace the countertops. That will probably be in two or three years. .