the kitchen - the beginning
Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, I may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
The kitchen was one of those areas that the previous owners had “fixed up”. I put this in quotes, because the upgrades were terrible and still necessitated full demo.
This is the first in a series of posts about the kitchen because between a blown budget right at the start, the pandemic, and just weird stuff cropping up in an old house, it took us over a year to finish this kitchen.
Full floor plan
Old kitchen
New kitchen
The previous owners had used this as a rental for years, but had done some renovations when it was time to sell. They weren’t good. First off, the tile was the white (ish), contractor grade 12x12” ceramic tile. It’s completely uninspiring and it always looks dirty. Second, the appliances were white, except the microwave, which was black. Mismatched, cheap appliances are not my cup of tea. The stove was also unusable for me since the controls were in the back. As a wheelchair user, I can’t be reaching over a hot stove to mess with the controls. Third, honey colored cabinets which though newly installed, dated the kitchen, especially with the other finishes. Fourth, beige backsplash. Beige. Why!? In any other color we could have lived with it, but ugh beige. Fifth, the L-shape meant I had almost no counter space and my wheelchair would bump up again the corner of the “L”, leaving me with even less usable real estate. This was a major frustration of mine while trying to bake with my little guy until we decided to renovate the kitchen.
We bought the house in October 2016, knowing we were going to renovate the kitchen and push it into the mudroom, a room between the garage and kitchen that made no sense whatsoever (see floor plan). The mudroom was pretty useless and even uglier than the kitchen for it’s gross peeling vinyl floor, bumpy walls, and heinous doors.
In the summer of 2019, my husband could tell I couldn’t take it anymore and we decided to tear down that wall….the one between the kitchen and mudroom. We had no real plan, just an idea of what this space could look like once the darn wall was out of the way. Like with most of these old houses, it was chicken wire and plaster. No fun at all to take down, but man it was great to see it gone. The “new” kitchen area seemed huge compared to the bifurcated spaces we were living in previously.
Before wall demo
During wall demo
After wall demo
In retrospect, this is not how things should get done. I should have secured financing to do the renovation before the wall was demolished. However, my husband likes to keep me happy and he knew that wall was making me unhappy, so that wall had to go. (He’s so great!) It did afford me the opportunity to plan the kitchen layout, get pricing, and determine our next steps.
Kitchen floor plan
I found Ikea’s Kitchen Designer the easiest to manipulate and use, and it’s free! I could add all the measurements of our design and see it in both 2-dimensional floor plan or in a 3-dimensional rendering. This is critical as what you think will fit, might not be what actually fits, so having the accuracy of those dimensions with standard cabinet sizes was amazingly helpful. It was also super handy to show contractors our plan while pricing out and getting estimates for electricians, countertops, and cabinets.
The next step was finding a cabinet supplier. We tried a few options before landing on Koopman Lumber in Andover. They were recommended by our neighbors who had just renovated their kitchen over, which looked amazing. Bonus is the husband is a former contractor, so we felt comfortable he would put something in his house that was quality. I was able to give Frank, our amazing kitchen rep my design and he made it come to life on his system. I may have squealed once when he emailed the first design. Don’t judge me.
Mudroom view
Kitchen view
Originally, I was looking at an all white kitchen, but the moment I touched the doors and they came away dirty, I knew white lowers were not for me. I didn’t want to spend my life endlessly cleaning my cabinets. Gray was an option, but with the wall down and all the light now streaming into the kitchen area, we opted for black lowers. We felt that even though they would be dark, all the natural light and the new lighting we were about to install would offset the dark lower cabinets. We were right. We also decided later to have white upper cabinets. I love the two-tone cabinet trend.
Pantry view
You’ll notice in these pictures that the original kitchen isn’t visible. That’s because we had hoped to save the original cabinets, refinish them and get new doors. As it turned out we couldn’t do that (See Weird Sh*t) because they wouldn't take standard doors, so later we had to redesign that section as well, but that’s a later blog. What’s represented is the addition of a double-sided peninsula with three cabinets with drawers on the original kitchen side, and three cabinets with double doors on the other, and a wine fridge in the corner. On the far, garage wall we have a full height pantry cabinet and three base cabinets, two two-drawer cabinets on each end and one double door cabinet in the middle. The reason we left the space above with no wall cabinets is that the kitchen is our entertaining space and a place I want to watch sports and movies with my family and friends as we hang out, cook, talk and they sit at the counter bar. In other words, there is now a big-ass TV over those cabinets.
I have so much more to share, but I leave it here for now. I would love to hear your comments on the design, or on what you’re doing with your kitchen.
