Kitchen Remodel – Complete!

In February 2011, I bought my house. It was in great shape and needed no work, but I definitely had some I wanted to do. Since I love to cook and entertain, I felt the kitchen needed some serious work. Here’s where we started:

In September of 2011, with the help of my great friends (and now essentially family) Don & Christine Riley, we laid tile to cover up the awful linoleum. This was probably my favorite of the remodel projects so far. Mind you, I am a marketer, not a contractor. Without the Rileys (who also aren’t contractors – they’re just brilliant) this would have been awful. Since they’re amazing, it turned out really well!

The next project was the cabinets. In October of 2011, I had my wisdom teeth out. My brilliant plan was do to my cabinets that weekend, start to finish! I was going to be home, might as well do it! That 3 day project may have turned into a 2 year project. I started sanding and staining and got ONE bay into my kitchen and hated it – as well as the work. So I took a short break (read 2 years) and then decided I wanted to ditch earth tones in my house altogether. So no staining – let’s move on to painting!

With the purchase of a new business, I also procured a Graco Magnum X5 that made this really easy. Overspray is terrible. The prep work is the longest part of this – and the hardest. Once the prep work is done, painting takes no time. I sprayed a coat over my entire kitchen in less than 20 minutes.

Here’s where we ended with the cabinets:

After finishing the cabinets, the off white appliances were… less than pretty. And the tan formica may have been even worse. The next piece was a countertop overlay called Feather Finish made by Ardex. We sanded the countertops and got to work! After finishing countertops, the final piece was adding new stainless steel appliances (unfortunately I don’t have an after countertop/before appliance picture).

With appliances!

 

This was one of the more fun projects I’ve worked on. The beauty of it? Once all is said and done (not including appliances), I spent less than $1,000, and can say that I did it all myself (with LOTS of help) and didn’t hire it out!