Well, there has been another baby followed by a lengthy illness, followed by a surgery, followed by complications, followed by a lengthy recovery between this post and last so I guess I have a good excuse for abandoning this blogging adventure (more on the illness/surgery/complications/recovery in a future blog). So here I go again. Did I also mention we undertook a kitchen renovation during all this as well?
When we first laid eyes on this house, I drooled over the beautiful granite countertops the previous homeowner had installed. I raved to my husband how gorgeous the cherry-stained custom cabinets were (they were a step up from the golden-oak with particleboard and golden oak-sticker end panels that faded in the sun to more of a pink oak). The house had a lot of other things going for it as well, and our previous home sold in one week so we knew it was time to move up in house.
The kitchen just weeks after moving in..
Six months later, and my blindness was gone. The kitchen cabinets were custom, but they were small, finished with the most non-durable ugly protective coating I have ever seen, and after a year of two small children banging into them, they were further scratched and damaged. I bought some time for a while by painting the beautiful brass handles and hinges with some oil rubbed bronze spray paint, but as the paint wore down, I realized that was only a very temporary solution.
The kitchen a year after moving in...we slowly got rid of white appliances and slowly bought black appliances as they were on sale. You can't see the scratches and dings, but the blotchy, uneven stain is very visible.. Can you see how the beautiful granite countertops could have blinded me?!
Then it started.... "Honey, I think we should renovate the kitchen, I can totally build all new cabinets myself." ...Husband smiles and nods hoping it's just a passing notion... This was followed by much research on my part into how to build cabinets, the DIY way. Heck, I had a Kreg Jig, I could build anything with that, right? And if Ana White could do it, so could I. The passing notion did fade a bit when I became pregnant with Little Mister, but my passion just switched from "I can totally build our kitchen cabinets" to "we can totally afford to have someone build us custom cabinets". I finally wore Husband down (actually, he just loves me and wants me to be happy), and with a combination of sweat equity and hiring Mark Hall Cabinetry to build our beautiful, new, white shaker cabinets, we pulled off a kitchen reno that came in with a price tag under $10,000! Look for future posts on how exactly we pulled this off....
Smaller eat-in kitchen space and lost window, but I gained a coffee bar and a huge pantry!
Beautiful Shaker cabinets extend all the way to the ceiling, and cabinets above fridge are more accessible.
Lower cabinets were refaced only so we could keep our granite counters.
