The kitchen was our first project on The Cherrystone House.
The original kitchen was from the 1940's, when the house was built. You might think that would add character and charm, but no, no, no. It was pretty hideous. And came with all the smells of a half a century of being used and abused with no upkeep. In fact, it smelled sooooo bad, that pregnant lil
ole' me couldn't stand to be anywhere near it.
It had to go!
I don't have a full "Before" photo, because we were in such a hurry to rip that kitchen out! I didn't even stop to think to take a photo. But the photo below will give you good idea of how horrid it was.
We removed the wall between the main room and the kitchen, tore out all the old cabinets and appliances (I saved one section of cabinet for this Baby Changing Table DIY project). Then we had to remove ALL the layers of linoleum that had accumulated over the years.... we counted seven different layers!
Then we put in our cabinets. We did this ourselves since we bought our cabinets at Ikea. The Ikea cabinets were as good as, or better than most of the other options in our price range. In the five years we lived with these cabinets, I don't have a single complaint.
Read more about what we learned from our cabinet install HERE (fair warning, there is a lot to read).
For the floors, we chose a groutable vinyl tile. They were high quality and looked amazing when we were done. You could not tell they weren't stone tile unless you really got up close and personal. Plus, they weren't as cold and hard as a stone tile floor.
We chose butcher block counter tops for their rustic look, as well as their friendly price tag.
I LOVED the final kitchen and the new and the new open floor plan, which made our 920 sqft (with an extra 300 sqft added on later by us) feel so much bigger and brighter. And now I could actually breathe in the kitchen. You don't see the fridge (or all our stuff) in the finished photos because this was when our house was staged to sell.
