The Little Kitchen That Could.

I feel like I spend so much time thinking about future projects, complaining about what is unfinished....that I don't take enough time to look around at what we have accomplished so far. We've gotten a lot done in the kitchen. There have been many changes made to make it feel more like our own. Our ultimate dream is to switch the dining room and kitchen but like many homeowners we have big dreams and empty pockets. ;) Until we can move things around, we decided to do what we could with the kitchen we have.

There is still more to do but here is a look at what we have done so far.

On the "to do" list:
~ Uncover the wood floor under the linoleum tiles (crossing fingers it is salvageable).
~ Paint the window frames black.
~ Decorative crown moulding at the tops of the cabinets and a small trim on the bottoms.
~ Build a shelf for above the windows, something to put my ever growing collection of white pitchers on.
~ New doorknobs, most likely glass to match the others in the house.
~ Purchase a more permanent island. We put this one in as a "tester" to see how we felt about it. So far we really like it!
~ We would like a new sink and faucet.


Here is the kitchen before. The walls were very dark and it had an apple border (I didn't get a picture of that).

When we bought the house, the microwave had a handle that had been taped. They painted it from white to black and then wrapped electrical tape around the handle. Quite a sight! That was one of the first things to go. Now we have a matching microwave!

The kitchen was okay but I wasn't happy with the oak colored cabinets and laminate backsplash.

One of the smallest changes we made that had a big impact was adding some trim to the hollow wood doors. The trim was cheap, I believe it was $.50 a foot and it gave blah doors a new look.

This is one of a pair of sconces I received from a neighbor in one of our previous houses. I believe they are from the 1920's, the socket inside is a Bryant and looking at pictures online of the pull chain and socket type gives me a date of approx. 1915 to the 1920's. My dad rewired them both and I just love them. The other one is set aside for my daughter's room. The one socket is broken and I'm doing my best to track down a "new" old one.

I just love ball fringe curtains. These came from Country Curtains and I added a strip of black grosgrain ribbon to them.

The chandelier belonged to my parent's dining room. It was white porcelain with pink and blue flowers. A can of textured spray paint gave it a new life. Like I said, we are on a budget here!

Here is our temporary island. It was being used in the garage as a table for my husband's saws. I went in and stole it! He'll just have to find something else for his tools to rest on. I love that it has little shelves for me to put my scales on. I made a curtain for the front of it and re stained the top. A good cleanup and it was ready to go! I hide my recycling bin inside. You can also see the chalkboard on the door in the background. We did the same trim on the basement door, a couple coats of chalkboard paint and we have a place for the kids to doodle.

This is a favorite spot for our dog, Sebastian. He hears the lid opening and will come running no matter where he is in the house!

The drawer front under the sink was the type that pulled forward with a plastic insert inside for the sponge. I never used it so we decided to just plug up the holes where the handle was and put a decorative piece on it.

The wall color was an adventure. I first painted it a yellow color, lived with it for a couple weeks and realized I just didn't like it! Normally I love yellow, my dining room is painted with a soft yellow. But in this kitchen, it wasn't working. So I got my paintbrushes and roller back out and did another color, this time a tan. After painting 4 coats of paint on these walls, and then doing the cabinets, I didn't want to see a paintbrush for a long time!

And then there is the backsplash. Like I said earlier, I wasn't crazy about the laminate sheet that was up there before. My very patient husband came home from work one day to find I had begun to rip it off the walls. It wasn't an easy job, they must have used a ton of adhesive! But off it came and we went over our options. We decided on a beadboard but couldn't decide whether to stain or paint it. In the end I decided to go with stain and figured it was always fixable later if I didn't like it! I'm not afraid to take a paintbrush to just about anything!

So that is the tour of our kitchen progress so far! I hope you enjoyed it! It's amazing to me how the little things can make a big impact. Just using a little trim around the spice cabinet, doors and the blank side of the cabinet next to the dishwasher really gave it a different look for a little bit of money.