Subway tile, farmhouse sinks and working dishwashers... this is what my dreams are made of! We started on our not so little kitchen renovation when I was about 7 months pregnant with our sweet baby girl (she is now 7 months old...). As you may guess, i'm very anxious for this reveal! The kitchen was the only room in the house we hadn't touched since we moved
in almost 2 years ago and it was becoming more and more evident that this space didn't work for us. For starters it was small. We're talking 10ft x 10ft small. We had limited counter space, no pantry and no dishwasher (gasp!). I realize there are much worse things to be complaining about, but this kitchen didn't work for our soon to be family of 4 (did I mention we have a 120 lb. Bernese Mountain Dog who loves laying in the middle of the kitchen floor while I cook?). Convenient to say the least.
After living in our house for a while we quickly learned what worked and what didn't, and came up with an ever evolving plan for our dream kitchen.
Our DIY adventure got kick started with a gently used dishwasher I found on a local Facebook page for $50. Preparing for a baby and all of the bottles that would come with her, I knew this was something I needed. I hate doing dishes, and that is putting it lightly (see photo above if you don't believe me #howembarrassing). I mean, I have perfected the art of stacking dirty dishes with the hope that the dish fairy will visit my house before I run out of clean dishes (this never happens btw... my dish fairy must be on permanent vacation). I didn't have to think twice about this deal, so what if we didn't have room to install it right now? we could figure out those little details later. Sold.
Since we didn't have an existing dishwasher we needed to figure out where we wanted to place this bad boy and basically how we wanted our new kitchen to be arranged. It obviously needed to go near the sink, but we needed to decide if we wanted to lose our only set of drawers or do some serious rearranging. After months of contemplation, we finally had a plan! We would remove the weird cabinets on the wall opposite the sink and move the refrigerator to that side. (You can get a small glimpse of these cabinets in the last photo above, unfortunately that's the best "before" picture I have). The new dishwasher would go next to the sink where the fridge used to be, and we would extend that counter top to meet the end of the kitchen wall. Have I lost you yet? Here are some drawings to give you a better idea of the space, the first is our current layout and the second is what we came up with for the new layout:
After living in our house for a while we quickly learned what worked and what didn't, and came up with an ever evolving plan for our dream kitchen.
Our DIY adventure got kick started with a gently used dishwasher I found on a local Facebook page for $50. Preparing for a baby and all of the bottles that would come with her, I knew this was something I needed. I hate doing dishes, and that is putting it lightly (see photo above if you don't believe me #howembarrassing). I mean, I have perfected the art of stacking dirty dishes with the hope that the dish fairy will visit my house before I run out of clean dishes (this never happens btw... my dish fairy must be on permanent vacation). I didn't have to think twice about this deal, so what if we didn't have room to install it right now? we could figure out those little details later. Sold.
Since we didn't have an existing dishwasher we needed to figure out where we wanted to place this bad boy and basically how we wanted our new kitchen to be arranged. It obviously needed to go near the sink, but we needed to decide if we wanted to lose our only set of drawers or do some serious rearranging. After months of contemplation, we finally had a plan! We would remove the weird cabinets on the wall opposite the sink and move the refrigerator to that side. (You can get a small glimpse of these cabinets in the last photo above, unfortunately that's the best "before" picture I have). The new dishwasher would go next to the sink where the fridge used to be, and we would extend that counter top to meet the end of the kitchen wall. Have I lost you yet? Here are some drawings to give you a better idea of the space, the first is our current layout and the second is what we came up with for the new layout:
My husband removed the odd cabinets on the wall across from the sink and moved the refrigerator to that side of the room pretty easily. Now we were getting somewhere! Having never installed a dishwasher, we enlisted the help of a friend and after an afternoon of moving electrical outlets and water hoses, EUREKA! we had a working dishwasher! (*Note: I use the term "we" pretty loosely here, by "we" I mostly always mean my husband).
Continuing on... Now that the dishwasher was working and the fridge was in its new home, we now had the daunting task (there's that "we" again) of taking down the two walls that were currently separating our kitchen and dining room. Since our kitchen was pretty small to start with, our goal was to open the walls to the dining room for more of an "open concept" feel. You watch HGTV, you know what I mean. Anyways, here is our dining room shortly after we moved in (oh how I miss my Palladian blue walls, so pretty). The kitchen is in the room to the right and the wall we were removing is the one with the light switch on it. Got it?
Continuing on... Now that the dishwasher was working and the fridge was in its new home, we now had the daunting task (there's that "we" again) of taking down the two walls that were currently separating our kitchen and dining room. Since our kitchen was pretty small to start with, our goal was to open the walls to the dining room for more of an "open concept" feel. You watch HGTV, you know what I mean. Anyways, here is our dining room shortly after we moved in (oh how I miss my Palladian blue walls, so pretty). The kitchen is in the room to the right and the wall we were removing is the one with the light switch on it. Got it?
In order to do this, my husband had to move that light switch and put it on a different wall in the dining room (the wall on the right in the picture below). My husband is not an electrician, he's actually a therapist (#manofmanytrades), he has had some experience with electrical work, but this was going to be difficult.
We called on another friend for help and after an afternoon of turning off the power, moving wires through the attic and then back down a new wall, we had light! Or should I say, we had a light switch!
Next up - wall demo!
Next up - wall demo!