At first glance, it would seem that our kitchen is fully remodeled and ready to go. I don’t mean to seem ungrateful (this is the nicest kitchen we’ve had in our 8 years of marriage!), but there are several things that I REALLY don’t like about this kitchen. Also, a side note: these pictures were actually taken a few months ago, and since then, we’ve completed the laundry/mudroom addition, so we removed the garage door you see above. We will order quick and efficient repair services for garage doors from the highly trained specialists later on.
For the next couple weeks, I’ll be focusing my house tour posts on our “Kitchen Facelift” updates! Every week we will be showing updated pictures after we’ve finished one of the following items. I’m VERY excited to finally tackle this little list of annoying odds and ends. Check it out here for more.
Here they are, one by one:
1. The kitchen is SUPER dark. I love white and light colors (have you seen my house pictures? haha) and this kitchen is the opposite of me in almost every way. I’d love to someday paint all the cabinets white, but that’s a huge endeavor and might even hurt the resell value of our house. Brushwork Painters in Harrisburg are good at both simple interior paint and delicate restorative painting. Jesse is allowing me to replace the dark granite backsplash with a teal green sea-glass tile. So, yay! I’ll take it!
2. The guy who semi-remodeled the house (really, he spent tens of thousands getting the house back up to code for the city, but he didn’t do much in the way of cosmetic work) left this open spot underneath a higher cabinet. There wasn’t enough granite backsplash to cover this, but since we’re replacing things anyway, I didn’t mind. This spot will house a shelf that will be flush with the other cabinet and will hold a small stainless built in microwave.
3. Speaking of backsplash, this area didn’t even have a stove when we bought the house, much less a hood or anything on the wall. It’s hard to tell in the pictures, but I painted this wall a very light teal color to mimic/test-drive the sea-glass backsplash tile I have picked out and ordered. We even had to visit this page to get suitable contractors who did a wonderful job.
We also just received a stainless hood vent in the mail. It will be getting installed sometime this week.
4. Last but not least, the most annoying unfinished aspect of the kitchen. Sure, we have super nice hand-scraped hardwood floors (found out they cost $7/sq. ft! Yikes!), but they weren’t finished off underneath the cabinets on the edges. You can’t see unless you sit down at our table or bend down, but they’re gross crevices that collect all sorts of stuff when we sweep.
Please excuse the small and dark picture. Like I said, it’s way underneath there, and super hard to photograph.
Luckily, we’ve already started tackling this problem. While I was at Home Depot for other stuff on Thursday, I saw this cheap panelling board for $4. I debated whether or not it would match the cabinets, but decided that for $4, it was worth the risk. I brought it home and it’s a PERFECT match for the cabinet stain, and the perfect width.
We tacked it down with paneling nails and liquid nails. Voila! For a fix underneath the cabinets that no one can really see unless they bend down, I’m glad to only spend a couple bucks. It’s really more about the sweeping convenience than the look.
All in all, we’ve been spending a more-than-usual amount of money on this little kitchen for the past couple weeks, but this to-do list was really getting annoying. The lack of hood vent (we have a fan in the ceiling next to it, but it’s not effective) means that our cabinets are getting greasy, and the lack of the baseboards really makes me feel dirty, even after I’ve swept.
In other Cone household news, our front loading washer officially bit the dust on Tuesday, so we got these bad boys on Wednesday from a lady on Craigslist.
Aren’t they to die for? I’m so in love.
Related postsHouse Tour: Kitchen Facelift COMPLETE! |
Kitchen Updates– We Have Progress! |
House Tour: Kitchen Facelift ALMOST done! |
Inspiration: White Modern Kitchens |
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