Here is what we started with…
That doorway leads to the hallway and the front of the house and yes, the bead board was purple and the upper wall a dark gold with green cabinets.
The stove was to the right of the green cabinets but in a strange position and the floating dishwasher didn’t work but she used it for extra counter space. Oh and that lovely brick up there? Plastic! But actually mortared to the plaster wall.
That’s the door to the basement and the only window. More plastic bricks and a pot rack.
Dark (CHEAP and badly installed) cabinets and the “window” that looks out onto the sinking room (that’s an entire post by itself) is plexiglass. We took that down immediately and just recently wondered if it’s because it gets cold or something from the falling-off-the-house room. We’ll see once it drops below 100 degrees here! Oh and the AWFUL tile back splash? Yeah, it goes all the way to the ceiling.
This is the door to the sinking room and she had her fridge on the side wall between that door and the one to the hallway. There was no water on that wall though (or anywhere besides the sink).
And now we’re back to the beginning!
Now we are NOT finished but have made some progress so I thought I’d share!
First, almost ALL of my “during” pics were taken in the evening when I had finished work for the night so their quality are bad and the color is off. Bear with me!
We started by painting the purple, white. Then we did the upper wall in a bright green.
C’s brother took all the brick off and re-plastered the wall for us! HUGE difference!
My friends came over to help MANY times!
Oh and see how GRAY the tile looks once we painted the bead board bright white? Ugh. It was gross. So we ended up painting the tile too (since we can’t afford to replace it).
This is Chris after he finished TWO coats of the green! I did 90% of the painting so he was really proud! HA!
This is C imitating ME after I walked in. My plan was to put antique globes on top of the dark wood cabinets and I thought the green would make them pop, instead it looked bland. Or something. I just didn’t love it. So we thought about it most of that day, asked some other people for opinions and finally my mom had the winning idea!
THIS is my sweet husband when I finally decided I really wanted to repaint! HA!
This color is TERRIBLE but what we did was paint it a really soft yellow, the same color that’s in the girl’s room. It wasn’t as bright and we LOVE it now… neither of us loved repainting though!
If you look closely at the first “before” photo you can see the floor. It was some kind of fake wood floor that was peeling up in places and really poorly installed (the story of this house is poorly done remodels). When we ripped out the cabinet for the dishwasher I was able to pull up some of the floor and look underneath it to see the OLD original wood sub-floor. SCORE! I love a good solid wood floor no matter how old! So Chris ripped it up which was a total surprise because when I told him I wanted to rip it out he told me I’d lost my mind! Then I left for the day and he did it alone!
First we primed the floor with oil primer and then I caulked a lot of the big separations.
Then I taped…
Actually, first we painted the cabinets white (they still need one last coat but we’ve been using them b/c we got lazy!) and then we painted the floor with two coats of white oil paint. Actually, I painted it. Not we. This was sort of my baby. As was the upstairs (did I ever show an “after” photo of the upstairs?). And this is how I got through the HOURS of floor painting (which nearly killed my back and knees!)…
I had DVDs of Dexter and literally watched every single season! (Who’s DYING for the new season to start??)
Then I painted a pale gray… three boards wide.
We let it sit for three days before walking on it.
Of course I don’t have a true “after” pic because our open shelving isn’t in yet, I haven’t bought this one cabinet I’m dying for, the cabinets need one last coat of paint, we haven’t bought or installed new hardware on the cabinets, I want a rug for the middle of the room and none of our artwork is on the walls. BUT I did snap a very grainy photo the other night while I cooked dinner so you can have a sneak peek!
Ok. So pretend like the walls aren’t gross looking because the yellow is really pretty. And pretend that the fridge is void of kid artwork which would mean I had finished my idea for their artwork in the basement. Pretend like we have an actual cabinet next to the stove with a small countertop instead of my antique herb drying cabinet (that I used to use for scrapbook paper storage but now we have anything skinny for the kitchen in there!) that we stuck there because it freakishly fit perfectly and I was dying for a counter space. Also imagine white open shelving on that wall and maybe another cabinet. Oh and pretend like the massive scratches in my floor are repainted. Oh and that there is no crock pot on top of the fridge because that would mean I had cleaned out the basement storage area for extra kitchen storage. Um, what else? I guess that this wasn’t our kitchen at all because EVENTUALLY we will rip off that room behind the sink that’s falling off the house, rip out the sink-wall and add on to the house (making it an eat-in kitchen while also adding a small family room back there, more space+a bathroom to our bedroom which is next to the kitchen and a bedroom+bathroom upstairs). BUT since that’s a few years away I am working hard to make this incredibly tiny space organized and cute!
Oh and user friendly because I’m trying desperately to cook more but having so little counter space is hard!
I’ll share more photos as they come!