Kitchen Begins A New Life

The most exciting transformation to date has been the kitchen. Please note that it is not complete but we are slowing working towards it. Tearing out the cabinets was not that difficult but it sure made a huge difference as far as the look of the space. We started with the area where the fridge enclosure would go. This proved to be harder and more challenging than we anticipated. Building the high cabinets was not difficult but lifting and putting them into place was an exercise in strength, perseverance, and problem solving. These high cabinets must weigh about 100 or more pounds. It took some creative thinking and in the end we used my husbands car jack, placed a board on top to help distribute the weight of the cabinet. We could lift them and place legs underneath without straining ourselves.

I can't wait to get rid of these. 

Freshly painted while I was having a much needed massage.

I know it's a mess but we just needed places to store items from the counter top, off the floor and from the wall and base cabinets on the other side. 

We removed the tall cabinet, base cabinet and wall cabinet and replaced them with two high cabinets. The middle one will have a built in microwave and the smaller 15" will have drawers which pull out. Our reason for this was to not have stuff accumulate on this one little counter that was there as you can see in the before picture on the left. I don't want any unnecessary spaces. When we lived in this house 6 years ago, we really felt this space was not being utilized. 

Once this area of cabinets were built we now had places to place some of the simple kitchen items we needed while the other side of the kitchen was being torn out. It took us at least two weekends. The last one we really worked hard because we were under a deadline to complete the install before the carpenters came to install the hardwood flooring (this is a whole other post I will share in the future).

The cabinets are coming down, thank goodness. There were old, smelly and not in very good condition.

I can't wait to get rid of the corner cabinets. I think they are a waist of space and very impractical. 

Yahoo!!! 

Here it is painted and one of the new upper cabinets are installed. We were to have a 12" and an 18" cabinet on either side of the hood fan that will go up but we changed our minds. Instead the 12" cabinet will go on the left of this cabinet here. 

It has been so nice to get rid of the yellow wall colour and replace it with something more modern. We chose Benjamin Moore's Ranchwood as our wall colour. 

From here, work continued to remove upper cabinets and paint then came the base cabinets. Well this was quite the task. 

We're trying to figure out how we will cut the back of the sink cabinets out. We eventually figured it out. 

Wall has been painted and ready to have the new base cabinets installed.

Here's the end result for what got accomplished for this section of the kitchen. 

You'll see that Darcy did a fantastic job of cutting out the enclosure for the plumbing.

This is how the kitchen remained for about a month. We installed a temporary counter top that cost us about 36.00. It was a piece of melamine we cut in half and laid each piece on either side so we could at least have a cutting surface. 

This past weekend we installed the rest of the cabinets and the doors. The kitchen is slowly starting to take shape. I am very pleased with the progress we've made so far but more is needed to complete this project. Here's what needs to be done before it is finished. 

1. Counter top to be installed
2. Electrical for double oven 
3. Double ovens to be installed
4. Rest of wall cabinets installed
5. Doors and drawers installed
6. Toe kicks 
7. Final plinths on each side of cabinets
8. Crown moulding
9. Moulding under counters
10. Hood fan hooked up
11. Stove top installed
12. Fridge to be placed
13. Island to be built
14. Placement of where island to go (I'll need your help on a decision for this one)
15. Butcher block on island
16. Organize cabinets and unpack kitchen boxes

Please come back to visit to see what the latest look of the kitchen is now and to see the progress that has been made. Any thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated.

April