It's hard to believe that just a few months ago our house was in a constant state of chaos and shambles, mostly.
We were in the middle of a major remodel project from April of last year through the end of August. It was hard living without the convenience of a fully operational kitchen, but it was all worth it...
See for yourselves:
Our cabinets came from Lowe's, made by Shenadoah: Charleston design. We enjoyed creating more space and implementing more storage area than we had before.
This is what it looked like before:
I like the bold color that the red brings to the room.
The countertop and sinks are Corian - which I like a lot. The color pattern of the countertop is called Maui and we had a good friend make and install it. It was one of the last things to finish up the room. And what a relief to finally have a larger workspace to create meals.
You may have noticed that I do not have an automatic dishwasher. That's by choice - I prefer washing/drying my dishes by hand and it's a chore I really don't mind doing. Here's how it looked about an hour ago:
Since I like a neat, clean kitchen - I usually don't leave dirty dishes sitting on the countertop. I especially don't like to go to bed at night with dirty dishes sitting around, as I prefer waking up to this:
You may also notice in the photo above that we have under-cabinet lighting installed. The other lighting in the kitchen is recessed and we installed a dimmer, which is really nice to have.
We didn't replace any applicances (which saved us some significant dollars) because our stove and fridge were both only a couple years old and are holding up well.
The pretty towels were embrodiered by Ed's cousin's wife and are a perfect match to the walls. The pretty red teapot was a surprise from Santa this year!
This space is one of my favorites. Moving the refrigerator to the other side of the room not only allowed us to create more counter workspace and cupboard space in the area vacated by the fridge, but gave us a chance to design a full size pantry cupboard, which I love.
The cabinet over the fridge holds all my small appliances: juicer, crockpot, breadmaker, and food processor. The blender is kept in a cupboard at the end of the counter (below) beside the toaster since we use these appliances almost daily. And, of course, my beloved RED Kitchen Aid sits in its designated spot in the baking corner.
Lastly, I wanted to mention our kitchen table which we had made in Shipshewana IN by the Amish.
It seats four comfortably like this, but as you can see it has wings on both sides that can extend the table to seat up to eight people. However, to make that happen in our still small kitchen would make the space very crowded. We normally have no more than six dine at the table at one time. I love the wood - it's brown maple, which we chose to match the cabinets, although the stain is a bit darker than the cabinets. It doesn't look too far off in real life.
The flooring is ceramic tile and the layout was designed by my husband. We had a great guy that we met in the beginning of our remodeling who did some fantastic work for us (I highly recommend him) - he laid the tile, mounted all the cabinetry, and did all our drywall work, which included building a beam across the ceiling to support the load bearing wall when we tore out part of the wall separating the kitchen and living room.
I made the curtain valances over each of the windows. I knew I didn't want full curtains because I didn't want to hide the light (like the curtains I had before did). I found this fabric at Joann's and it matched perfectly with the paint we picked out. I found the brick red oval braided rug that sits in front of the sink online.
The space we've created makes it easier to entertain, create meals, and enjoy togetherness. I hope you enjoyed this little tour of our newly remodeled kitchen.
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