Utah Kitchen Renovation: The Reveal!

Hey Everyone!  I may not have been posting much lately, for that I am incredibly sorry!  We've been super busy finishing up projects with the house, figuring out what we want to do for the rest of year, working, birthdays, and life.  You know, the normal things.  One of the biggest things we've accomplished is... the kitchen!  It's finished, woot woot!  It took us so long because we couldn't figure out the corner cabinet.  I'll come back to that later.  But how about some before pictures?

When we got the keys to the house, we walked in and well kind of freaked.  The kitchen was in worse shape then we anticipated.  We went to Lowe's and were going to get quotes and were looking at a HUGE renovation.  Then sense kicked back in and we decided to make it the best we could for now.  And now honestly, after it's all done, I think it looks great and I wouldn't want it any other way!

We painted the cabinets with Valspar Interior Semi-Gloss Paint in Woodlawn Colonial Gray.  Our style is more of a rustic but classy nautical.  This paint fit that bill perfectly!  We changed the hardware to go with the rustic nautical theme we wanted.  We already had some of knobs from our previous house in VA, which was great because it saved us some money.  The hinges we had to get new because the doors here were different from our old house.  All the drawers now have cabinet pulls. I think the hardware looks great against the gray.

The troublemaker corner cabinet has finally been finished.  It could use a few touch ups from the install, but I'll get around to that sooner or later.  Originally it had a very old lazy susan in there that was metal, chipping, and really rusty.  I removed that, patched the holes, and continued with painting it like all the other cabinets.  The problem was that it had two individual small doors that worked separately from each other, making it hard to get into and not very functional.  We installed 4 mortise joint hinges between the two doors.  A magnetic latch on the left side that holds the door closed when it's shut.  It now fully functions as one piece!

There used to be a microwave above the stove (as shown in the before pictures).  There was about 13 inches between the stove top and the bottom of the microwave/fan.  You couldn't put a stockpot on the back burners at all.  With thanksgiving coming up, we knew we need to fix that problem.  We decided to get an undercabinet range hood from Lowe's.  We ordered a power cord kit from GE to hook it up to outlet that the microwave was originally plugged into!

Eventually we'd like to replace the stove, maybe next year.  But what we did end up replacing right away was the refrigerator.  We decided to go with the GE Slate Refrigerator from Lowe's.  I like that it's gray and that it won't show those pesky hand prints my loving kids like to leave.  The microwave was replaced and put next to the fridge.  I wanted to make this area into a coffee bar area, but right now we need it more for the microwave then anything else.

Nothing has changed with the sink at all, although I'd love to one day get another composite sink!

To the right of that is the dishwasher.  We're looking at replacing that soon, so stay tuned for that!

Next to the dishwasher are 4 of the 6 drawers in the whole kitchen.  We ended up replacing the undermount slides in them because after a long time of use the slides had become warped and let the drawers fall out when you opened them.  These are my least favorite part about the kitchen still.  The slides don't glide seamlessly even though they are new, and they don't seem as strong as well.  But they work, and that's what matters at this point.

You may also notice that we wrapped the peninsula in shiplap, which makes it even more nautical-y (if that's even a word). Tutorial on that coming soon!

Now before this post becomes too long, stay tuned for further organizing, dishwasher replacements, and other projects in regards to the kitchen!

Have fun!
~Echo