Kitchen Reno: The Reveal (The AFTER!)

The time has finally come. More than 13 months after it first began, I’m sharing the official “after” photos from our kitchen renovation. (If you didn’t see the before pics last night—or last year!—you have check ’em out.)

The majority of the work was done by ourselves, hence why it took so long. Needless to say, with full-time jobs and a toddler, it’s not easy to get big projects like this done in a timely manner. We also suffered from periods of burnout—once we got it to the point where it was not only livable, but functional, it was easy to lose motivation for periods of time. Then we’d tackle something else and again, take another long break. If I’m being 100% truthful, there are still a couple of really little things that need to be done here, but I doubt that you would ever notice unless I point them out to you. So I’m not going to. :)

We enlisted the help of my brother for demo of the z-brick and putting up the new drywall, but then we did all of the drywall finishing work—the taping, the mudding, the sanding—all by ourselves. My mom helped with some sanding and painting for the walls, too. Before we put the new drywall up, while we had all the walls open, we had an electrician come in and wire for under-cabinet lighting, as well as fix a few other issues. I sanded and painted the cabinets all by myself over the course of a couple of months, actually. We ripped up the old flooring ourselves, but hired someone to lay down the new stuff. Finally, my brother helped put up the two types of crown molding—the molding to cover the smalls spaces between the cabinets and the soffits, as well as the molding between the soffits and ceiling.

As you saw in our before photos, the original dishwasher surround (right there by the garbage can) was made of plywood, with the z-brick plastered to it. We ripped that out, and rebuilt the surround ourselves. We also built it out of plywood, but covered it in wainscoting and cut some shoe molding to go around the bottom and used corner molding along the corner seams to finish it all off.

The floors are cork, a plank style. We ordered it from a local company, but it’s Wicanders Scandia in the Sandstorm color. We also finally bought a kitchen table and chairs. It was difficult to find something that was white and didn’t break the bank, but we finally stumbled upon this set at Value City. Go figure.

The countertops are the original ones (well, from when we moved in). They are the only thing, aside from the appliances and a couple of light fixtures, that we did not change. I really want to upgrade them—I’ve been dreaming of some kind of black granite—but that kind of investment is not in the budget right now and these countertops, although laminate, are in great shape.

We replaced all of the doors—including the hallway closet doors and the basement door, seen here—with six-panel doors. I cannot overstate the effect of this upgrade, even alone. It makes an amazing difference.

Our sliding glass door is a nice one—it’s a good quality door, and in good condition, but we couldn’t get over the stained wood look of it. We like all of our doors and trim to be crisp white. So what did we do? We painted it, of course. We did that back in the summertime, thankfully, because to really get into all of the nooks and crannies, we had to take the sliding door right off of the track and lay it down in the middle of the floor. :) It turned out great, though! Definitely worth the work. Those bi-fold closet doors—which hide our pantry/laundry closet—are also new. We installed them ourselves, which proved to be quite a challenge. There was a lot of cursing involved in that project.

Ah, the cabinets. These are our original cabinets—and the same hardware—as what was in the before photos. Kind of hard to believe, isn’t it? I primed them with Zinsser SmartPrime, and painted them with Benjamin Moore’s Advance paint in the color Paper Mache. It is a white that is a little on the creamier side. In some of these pics, the lower cabinets appear to be a slightly different shade than the uppers, but that’s just a trick on the eyes in the photos, perhaps due to lighting. In real life, they are all the same color. I used a brush and a foam roller to paint all of the cabinet frames, but used a spray gun hooked up to our air compressor to prime and paint all of the cabinet doors. What a process that was—one evening for each coat, on each side. One coat of primer + two coats of paint x 2 sides of each door = 6 nights of back-breaking, mind-numbing work. It turned out SO. GOOD. though.

I had never worked with a spray gun before, but was totally inspired by Jenny here. We planned to use the exact spray gun she used, but the popularity of it must’ve blown up after her post made its way around Pinterest, because I could not find it ANYWHERE. I ended up ordering another HVLP gun from SprayGunWorld.com. Their site looks totally ghetto but they are legit and the guys there were really helpful to me. I e-mailed and called a few times to tell them what I was trying to accomplish and with what (my compressor size/type), and they recommended guns that were compatible with my needs.

Our countertops sometimes come off a little pink in photos, which pisses me off because they’re really not. They’re actually very similar to the look of the floor, if you can imagine that. Again, hoping to replace those—just trying to figure out realistically how long we are going to live with this kitchen and therefore, whether the investment in granite (or something similarly expensive) is worth it.

A small change that we made that makes a HUGE difference was to change the side of our sink that the disposal was on. When we put the countertops back on and the sink back in, we swapped it before hooking everything back up. As you can see, the sink is slightly off-center on the counter there, and very close to the dishwasher. Before, it made very little sense, but the disposal (and therefore the side where we washed dishes) was on the left. We moved it to the right and love it. We also upgraded our faucet.

Oh! And my roman shade. That’s DIY, made out of fabric and a cheap set of blinds. I owe Pinterest for that one. Here’s one of the tutorials I referenced.

The above pic gives you a pretty good look at our crown molding. Love it! It was one of those finishing touches that really helped make the space. We were too chicken to do away with our soffit completely (didn’t know what we might find in there), plus, we weren’t replacing the cabinets, so it wasn’t really going to buy us any additional space. To try to make the soffit blend in with the cabinets, we painted the soffits the same color as the cabinets (as opposed to painting them the wall color, which is commonly done), then added the crown to make everything look more “built in.” To try to make the soffit appear purposeful, if you will. It’s still a stupid soffit, but hey, I think we worked pretty well with what we’ve got. :)

We did it. Is it my dream kitchen? No, but my dream kitchen would be in a house that would probably cost close to half a million dollars. That’s why it’s a dream. :) But this kitchen gets the job done. And now, it’s white, bright, and a place that’s more than fine to cook, bake, and hang out in. I love the way everything turned out. When I look back at the before photos now, I can’t even believe that our kitchen used to look like THAT. We have the added bonus of being super proud of the new kitchen because of how much work we did ourselves.

We’ve come so far.

One more reminder of THE BEFORE

Change is a beautiful thing.

Questions? Leave them in the comments and I will do my best to answer everything.

To see all of my blog posts related to this renovation, click here. And here are links to some of the updates along the way:

• My confession: Our kitchen is really ugly
• Planning the renovation
• The beginning of the renovation
• Prepping for demo
• Demolition: The brick is gone
• New drywall
• Living in a huge mess
• Prepping and priming the cabinets for paint
• Painting the walls green
• Finally making the kitchen livable/functional again!
• A new faucet
• Spray painting the cabinet doors
• Trying to narrow down options for the floor
• About the floors: I think we’re going for cork!
• Ripping up the old floors

What a long journey it’s been! :)