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Monday, April 8, 2013

Stick a (4 ft.) fork in it, this kitchen renovation is DONE!


When I left you last time (a week & a half ago...) the kitchen was still pretty much a disaster. It took a while for it to get any better. We exceeded our time frame by exactly a week, and exceeded our budget, but it is so, so, so, so, SO worth it!

Do you know how exciting it is to make dinner on a brand new range?

It also took 400 MORE dollars and a drywall man (who worked till 1:30am on a Saturday night that we found on Craigslist) for it to get any better.

We learned a few VERY valuable lessons.

  1. Dry-walling a kitchen by yourself for the first time ever when you're in a hardcore time crunch is not the best idea.
  2. Know when to ask for help when you need it (help from a professional & help in the sense of your boss giving you time off from work).
  3. DO NOT put HUGE projects like renovating an entire kitchen off until the very last minute. 
Graham is leaving tomorrow for Texas and this has not been our usual pre-goodbye weekend. Instead of happy, fun, quality time together, we've been working till all hours of the night getting this house ready to go on the market. And I dare say, it's finally ready. There are still a few things we need to do, but the kitchen was the last big thing and it is finally, finally finished. 

So, I'm going to stop rambling and flood you with pictures of my beautiful kitchen and start wishing we had done this two years and three months ago when I moved out here. 


The cats LOVED the chaos. 
Hermione didn't care that we were busy... =) 
Drywall finally up! 
The kitchen area masked off & ready for the paint sprayer!
(I totally felt like I was in National Treasure at this point...)
Someone LOVES the feeling of paint between his toes... 
Not sure which I love more... the molding or the openness...
Counter tops ready for installation!

A little bit about the counter tops first. We had green (ugly) laminate. I wanted butcher block, but Ikea is ALWAYS out (grrrr) and we weren't willing to put down granite when we're doing this to make the house sell. Anyways, we heard about these resurfacing kits that Rustoleum makes and we were going to go that route and resurface them ourselves. Like two days after we decide to do this, a coworker of mine introduces me to Get-A-Grip. They're a company who does counter top, tile, bathtub resurfacing. I called them for a quote pretty much instantly. We ended up spending about $150 more than we would have if we had bought the kit and DIY-ed it, but this was by far the best purchase we made.

We removed the counters for them & put them in our "paint" room (formerly the junk room...) so they didn't have to mask anything off. They were finished in less than an hour and it only took two days for the counters to be usable again (the time to cure was the big downside of the Rustoleum kits.)

Get-A-Grip offers a five year warranty, free quotes & fast service. I HIGHLY recommend them if you want to give your counters an update, but don't want to spend a ton of money. We absolutely LOVE the way ours look & feel. It's hard to believe these are the same ugly green counters I've silently cursed for the past 2+ years.

(I was not perked or compensated in any way for this little mini-review. I'm just a very satisfied customer.)

Back to the kitchen...

And it's finally finished. Oh. Em. Gee. 




Love, love, LOVE the new pendant light!
I love that the hardware matches the microwave handle =)

Love my hutch & giant Pier One fork & spoon!
I finally framed & found a place for these AWESOME printables!

6 comments:

  1. It looks fabulous!!! Now I need you to help me decorate my kitchen!!

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  2. What a fab makeover! Your kitchen is bright and airy, such a difference from how it started.

    P.S. I hope you will consider removing the captcha in your comment area.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! It's hard to believe it's the same room!

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  3. Commenting on your blog and will at the forum at YHL too-- VERY nice job--- brightens and lightens to the max, even though it was alot of work!

    Good job!

    Visiting from YoungHouseLove Forum,
    Smiles, MaytagNMom in Illinois

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much! We love how it turned out. Totally worth every single bit of labor.

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  4. Great job!! I really appreciate your work because you did this work own.Your project inspire me to do remodeling of my home also.Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete

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