Anatomy of a Kitchen Remodel

We've never liked the kitchen in our house in Colorado. There wasn't anything really all that wrong with it. It was pretty neutral and had decent space, but we got spoiled by having a very efficient kitchen in our last rental house before we moved here. We had fun things, like tall cabinets, full opening drawers, and slide out shelves, and also a hood over our range that actually vented outside. It was a small kitchen in a small house, but it held a lot!

After many years of saving up, we finally bit the bullet this fall and had our kitchen redone. The footprint is the same, but everything is new.

Here's what our kitchen looked like in the beginning. Note the oak cabinets, early '90's light box, and the huge space between the tops of cabinets and the ceiling (why?). Not only did those spaces attract a lot of dust, but since the hood only recirculated the steam from what we were cooking and put it back in the house instead of outside (again - why?), anything in those spaces got nasty, greasy, sticky!

This is what our kitchen looked like the next day.

Here's the garage. As of just a few days ago, we are parking both cars in the garage again (just in time for a day with snow and a high of 19 F!).

Look! Cabinets!

This is what the kitchen looked like from the living room. A big room swathed in plastic.

This is how they template for the counter top - with large plastic sheets and a glue gun. Then the template gets folded away and the counter top is made.

Every day there were men in my house. Sometimes just one - sometimes four or five. These are the electricians putting in our under cabinet lighting. This took hours! Other things that took hours and hours and hours - tiling, re-texturizing the ceiling, plumbing for gas, installing the toe kick lining (the toe kick is the indentation at the bottom of the cabinets that provides a place to put your feet so you can get closer to the counter tops without losing your balance).

But, finally, ta-da! We have a new kitchen! Isn't it lovely! I love the new goose neck faucet. It makes washing and rinsing large items much easier! I love our big drawers, the lazy susan cabinet in the corner, the new fan we had installed over the dining room table, and how quietly everything closes. We now have a gas stove, and each week we burn less. Our new dishwasher is so quiet that I frequently don't even know it's running!

 We now have a lovely tile back splash. The subway tiles are off white, and the glass tiles are fall colors. Oddly enough, we keep looking around the house and finding other items that we have owned for years that match our new kitchen. Colors of shelves, finishes on lamps, candle holders. It's funny how our tastes haven't changed much over the years!