Finished Kitchen Pictures!

Previous blog posts on the kitchen...

• Frustrated with the old kitchen (and planned layout)
• In process - part 1
• In process - part 2

I'm finally posting pictures of our kitchen! I was trying to find some "before" photos for comparison and came across pictures I took when our house was being inspected. The changes are amazing. (Click on the photos to see them larger.)

View from the living room. The wall between the kitchen and dining room is gone. (The one with the door frame, not the one with the arch.) And the carpet in the kitchen and the other rooms is gone.

This is the dining room window.

And this is after - kitchen & dining room are now one big room.

A view of the dining room from the other direction, with the living room (and Jason & Izzy) in the background.

This corner cabinet was removed. The doorway to the back door was also widened.

You can't see the doorway but the new range is in the same location as the old one.

You can see the doorway a little here.

Here's another photo of the wall that was removed. The new fridge is about in the same position as the old one. (In the background is my realtor, Tom Andrew, and Tony Burk, who did the inspection.)

Fridge, tall cabinets and what I call the "china cabinet."

This is the old sink. (Finally removed the thermometer from the window this summer.)

And the new sink.

And another shot of the sink. (Please ignore cat in window, he's never allowed up there.)

I want to thank my mom and step-dad for spending their summer helping us with the kitchen. By helping I mean rewiring the entire kitchen, installing lights and outlets everywhere, assembling and installing the cabinets, trouble-shooting all the issues that came up with a 70-year-old house, doing plumbing and duct-work, and being there for the granite and flooring installation. Thank you so much for all your hard work!! Even though it took weeks longer than we expected, I'm so glad to spend the time with you. It was a great summer of grilled dinners on the patio and watching Wipe Out - every time it was on. We love you!! And Izzy misses you! See you soon! :)

Kitchen Progress - Part 2

Today the flooring was put in and we made some last decisions about the countertop. The granite countertop should be installed next Wednesday. We still need to get a few things, pick out the backsplash, and paint the door and window trim. Hopefully we'll be done in a couple of weeks. :)

Here's the progress so far...

This is what we're calling the china cabinet set. The upper cabinet will have glass doors to show off my Mikasa place settings.

The ladder is where the fridge will go. There will be another tall cabinet on the other side of the fridge. (This will be installed after the floor is done.)

Some of the cabinets with doors.

Microwave installed, flooring done, and most of the cabinets have doors now.

Where the vinyl meets the wood. I think these two ended up looking very nice together. (The wood will need to be refinished at some point and we'll probably pick a more muted finish.)

The landing down to the basement. 

(Basement to the left, back door to the right.)

Progress!! On Saturday we'll be able to move the fridge to it's designated spot and install the range and dishwasher. (Plumbing is not done yet, so they won't be ready to go just yet.) More pictures coming soon! :)

Kitchen Progress

First, if you haven't read the previous blog about the kitchen, start here... http://jc-parsons.blogspot.com/2010/09/kitchen-remodel.html

The first thing we did was remove the carpet from the kitchen area. This left the lovely linoleum floor with a lot glue left-over from the carpet. We also removed the carpet from the dining room area and took up the baseboards.

Next the we hired our friend, John Sortman, to take down the wall between the kitchen and dining room and to remove the pantry area. (See photos below.)

Here's some photos after the plaster walls were taken down...

John also took out all but one of the cabinets and then patched the walls and the ceiling. The ceilings were not only different heights, but one was smooth and the other had a bumpy pattern to it. So we added bumps to the other side and repainted the whole ceiling.

My step-dad, Gary, then started on the electrical, adding outlets and light switches. He also added another light above the sink. Then the assembly of the base and cabinets started. Before putting the cabinets in place, we painted the walls a pretty buttery yellow. We just picked out the granite for the counter top and we're in the process of picking out the flooring.

Here's the progress so far...

More updates coming soon! :)

Kitchen Remodel

It's about time we remodeled the kitchen. We've been waiting years to do this and we're finally in a position where it financially makes sense to do this. We've got the plans (courtesy of my step-dad, dated 8/24/06) and I've been working on the Ikea kitchen planner. We're also hitting Home Depot and getting prices there. We're getting a really good idea of what we want and what the final project will look like.

I thought I'd list the frustrations with our kitchen, but really, pictures will tell the story so much better.

Here's our counter space:

Yeah, that's it. If you just did dishes and then fix something to eat, your entire counterspace is now taken. We often use the stove to set things or the edge of the sink.

Also notice that the cabinets are so low that very little fits under them:

Ever knock over a bottle of wine when trying to open your cabinet door? Thank God it wasn't open.

The other problem with things not fitting under the cabinets is that when you try to use them, you either have to keep putting them away or create space on other surfaces. So the toaster and the coffee maker are on top of the microwave (which is on a microwave cart). And the Kitchenaid Mixer and knife block are on top of a butcher block kitchen cart. There are extension cords everywhere so that everything can be plugged in. This not only looks cluttered, it's probably also a fire hazard.

Which leads me to another complaint. If you do have anything "too tall" on your countertop, you have to set it by the wall so that you can get the cabinet doors open. But obviously they can't be opened all the way.

Please note in the last picture the dings in the cabinet doors - from hitting all the objects set on counters.

Other ugliness in the kitchen includes the brown carpet (brown when clean, brown when dirty), the lack of storage, and the plaster walls cracking behind the cabinets that are built right onto the walls. Makes me a bit nervous.

We plan on taking down the wall with the doorway between the kitchen and dining room. (The wall to the right of the blender.) This will open up the kitchen quite a bit and create more usable space for cooking, baking, and eating.

In the picture above, it's not the wall with the arch-shaped opening, but the one beyond that with the door frame. (Photo taken by our realtor when we had the house for sale last year. Obviously we decided to stay a bit longer.)

Here's the Ikea layout - so far. I'm a bit frustrated with the software, so there's a few things I gave up on and will tweak when we're back at the store.

Here's one of our inspirations - the cabinets are the same as the ones we want to get. (Knobs are different though.)

I'll post updates as we go. We still need to go to Home Depot, decide on what we want, find a renter for Jason's house/cabin in Kentucky, measure the kitchen again, go to Ikea to place the order, have a professional come out and measure again for the countertops, tear up all the carpet in the house, take down all the cabinets in the kitchen, the tear down the plaster wall between the kitchen & dining room... THEN we'll get around to putting together the new kitchen. :)