Kitchen Before and After: From dark & dank to light & bright
Well, after many many months from start to finish, I finally have a wonderful, clean, bright kitchen! It started off as "kitchen jail" with posts all around, wallpaper everywhere (including inside cabinets) and smelled.. not good. We then made a lot of changes to get it to be more liveable (for me), all the while planning and budgeting for the real thing.
The real thing involved going down to studs, putting in new drywall and adding insulation, tearing out the laminate floors and the 2 layers of tile underneath to replace with LVP, getting all electrical up to code, installing a hood vent (which involved some customization by a sheet metal specialist), installing recessed lights, re-framing and replacing the window (and the stucco on the exterior side), having a gas line installed to change from electric cooktop + in-wall oven to a regular gas range, replacing all cabinets with IKEA cabinets, replacing laminate countertops with quartz, replacing the penny round stone-of-some-kind backsplash with ceramic tiles, replacing all appliances. The end result came in just under $30k.
BEFORE: Dark, unspeakably inefficient, frustrating to work in and look at.
BEFORE: Yes, those are cedar shingles on the side of the perfectly useless 30-in height lower cabinet.
A quick shot of the very low-budget "good enough" work we did: it mostly involved "getting rid of the ugly" and painting whatever was left. YES, we hired regular painters to paint over wood. The cabinets weren't high-quality, smelled rancid and looked incredibly unappealing to me. They did a great job, it brightened things up tremendously and was good enough until there was enough budget to do a *real* renovation.
INTERIM: we were still moving in, so it looks a little junky
AFTER:
AFTER: Night view, before the hood vent was installed, but after my new dining set arrived.
Side-by-side of dining area
Side-by-side of kitchen area
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@felizlady - thank you for the suggestions. That window is up for replacement sometime this year, and we'll likely get white cellular shades there (to go with window at the sink). The peninsula is high-gloss white, so can't really be painted. All "permanent" fixtures are neutral on purpose, so I can change colors of soft goods/decor down the line if needed. There's really no place in the kitchen or dining area for framed art (I have an "art wall" in the living room for all art, which I'm picky about) and I'm not inclined to put framed art in the kitchen - I've included a photo of the one wall where one might put some framed art, but it's currently in use as a "perching/feeding" wall for the cats ;) But thank you for the suggestions - I appreciate that not everyone is into the minimalism of this kitchen, but we couldn't be more thrilled with it.
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoInteresting how most of the color was removed.
above photo without color:
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- 7 years agolast modified: 7 years ago
Patti