Kitchen Update: Before and After

For the last 4 months Dennis and I have been spending our spare time updating our kitchen--updating to make it look a little vintage-- but updating no less. We (mostly Dennis) did all of the work ourselves, with the exception of the quartz countertop. Dennis is quite the handyman. Who knew he could do plumbing, electrical work, install flooring and a backsplash and rebuild cabinets. With the help of youtube and a can-do attitude we accomplished it all!! Here's what we did. The before:

 

Drumroll please... And the after:

I'm so happy with it I can't even begin to tell you how much I love it. Let me give you a run down of the work we, ahem, he did and I assisted with.

First we painted all of the cabinets white, which was probably the biggest pain of the whole project and the part that Dennis reluctantly agreed to. Then, we added all new hardware and took out several of the wood faces of the cabinets and added glass fronts. It's hard to tell, but the insides of the glass cabinets were painted gray. We also added a small molding piece to the tops of the cabinets. I can't tell you how long I've waited for that little piece of molding. It automatically made the kitchen look a thousand times better! I painted the walls a yellowish white color (I think it's called Canvas). We changed out all of the lighting and added 4 more lights above the windows. Dennis must really love me, because he agreed to let me spray paint my new lights black! I had all sorts of crazy ideas, I tell you.

The next, obvious difference is that we moved the sink to where it should have been installed from the very beginning. Now I have a work place where it should be and I no longer cram my work into a small corner between the sink and the stove. Moving the sink involved making new drawers and moving around some cabinets. We installed butcher block counter top on the back counter and black quartz silestone on the rest of the cabinets. The quartz is the only thing that we hired out for and let me tell you, it's the part of the project that took the longest!! In between the installation of the two countertops we put in new cork flooring. This was another thing that I had to do some persuasion on, but it looks and feels great!

Finally, we added the subway tile backsplash with the charcoal grout and added new black switch plates. Oh, and Dennis made and installed a new cabinet/bookshelf/wine rack above the fridge. The original cabinetry had been torn out by the previous owner in order to fit the larger fridge but had never been reinstalled. You can see that in the first picture.
Considering I spend about 75% of my home waking hours in the kitchen, I'm thrilled with how much our hard work paid off. Dennis thinks it's too black and white, but that is exactly what I love about it. From his reaction, you can tell that this was a labor of love for him and he agreed to most of the changes without too much debate.