Hello Friends!! Here’s a little peek of our progressing Kitchen Reno & some thoughts from along the way. For those of you taking on a big project that you have to do in stages (aka it is not going to be done overnight & you do not have a HGTV crew or contractor) … take a deep breath and embrace the ugly… keep your ultimate vision in mind but celebrate the progress along the way!! It will not be ugly forever. 

Here we have our lovely kitchen upon purchase a year and half ago. First step: Remove those upper cabinets!!  (we also had the wallpaper removed & cabinets painted & then ceased work until we had another chance (aka: time/money) to work on it.

Ah… much better with those cabinets out the way!!!   You see that very vintage double oven? This Christmas break I pleaded with the hubs to pleeeeaaaase pull out the oven to see if we had a gas line behind it. Now that oven had probably been in place since 1963 so needless to say it was quite the ordeal to pull that thing out… and imagine with me how gross it was behind it. yuck!!! Sadly no gas line but hey I was still excited about the prospects of a new electric oven!! I went out the next day on a mission and found myself a new oven. Woohoo!! Can I get a witness up in here!?

The conversation from here went a little like this… “well, since we already have the oven out and you have to do this dry wall repair.. maybe we should go ahead and take these upper cabinets out too!!?? (insert batting eye lashes & a cute smile) 

Mad props to my handy hubby!!

then we added to demo — bye bye massive ugly light box thing.

And of course we do most of our loud demo work at night… thank goodness our kiddos can sleep through the crazy!

Next, because putting out an oven, drywall repair, new lighting & exposed shelving was not going to be enough, someone had the genius idea to put in shiplap!!!

We purchased three 4’x8’x 1/8″ sheets of underlayment from Lowes and cut them down into 8″ strips.

 Tip: use 1″ or shorter brad nails on a slightly low PSI setting to avoid shooting the nails completely through the boards & to avoid puncturing any wires inside the wall with long brad nails. 

Tip learned the hard way: Make sure your wall behind your shiplap is primed or painted.. or you can do what I did and prime & paint every crack…. Don’t do it!!!!! 

 

Killz Primer is a fan fav!!  Paint we chose- Valspar, Bistro White.

Next reclaimed wood shelves.

We wanted a little bit of the pipe look so we opted for a 1″ black gas flange, pipe, end cap combo purchased from Lowes.

We decided to do a little metal mixing & I am so glad we did!! Copper pipe straps! Love!!!

And Ta-Da!!! 

Below you can see one of the new light fixtures.

Source: Lamps Plus 

Several people have asked me if I feel like I lost a lot of cabinet space and my answer is no, not really. It forced me to think about a couple things

#1 what items do I use on a regular basis?

#2 what items do I like and want to see on a daily? ( my nana’s cookie jar, vintage fiesta ware & copper cuteness -thank you Target & Crate & Barrel!) 

and just so we don’t forget where we started from… (if you are the impatient type like me it helps to remember!!)

Here’s to many more updates to come… but for now we will celebrate this progress (but trust me when I say, I have plans! )