Kitchen

This is where the house tour starts to go down hill.  Kitchens are more difficult to fix than other rooms because they tend to require more time and money than other rooms. Our kitchen has definitely improved since we moved in, but it is still a ways from where I would like it to be.

Here is what it looked like when we moved in:

More house hunting photos.  Look at my lovely 80’s style kitchen.  You can’t see too well in this picture the plate rail on top of the cabinets that give it that great country feel or the ‘rustic’ eighties hardware.  I especially loved the scalloped floral border, that as I peeled off I discovered another equally impressive floral border below.  This room was also painted in the glowing, shiny yellow color that was in the dinning room (think high gloss.)

Here is my favorite part of the kitchen:

Actually it is kind of impressive.  This is the original dishwasher from when the house was built in 1985 and it lasted until October 2011.  A 26 year life span is pretty good as dishwashers go.  It was a ‘quite scrubber’ Kitchen aid.  Although if that was quite I want to know what the loud ones were, you could not even hold a conversation in the same room when it was running.

Overall we did not do a lot to this room yet.  I painted it with the colors from the dinning room and changed all the hardware to something a little more modern.  The trim was painted white and the pantry door was switched up the same as the foyer door.  Lastly when the disher washer finally died we replaced it.  Oh, almost forgot we had my dad put up a new hood, nothing fancy just a white one that actually ran compared to the grease stained off-white one that came with the house.

Here is what it looks like now:

I know not a whole lot different, but its progress.  I would love to paint the cabinets white or dark brown and change up the counter top(although the countertops ate totally awesome I can cut right on the counter or put a hot pot directly on the counter and nothing happens), but it isn’t in the budget right now.  I was totally going to replace all the appliances with stainless-steal but actually Hubs and I are talking about moving as soon as our three years are up so we don’t have to pay the first time home buyers credit back, so we thought better to spend the money on high end finishes in our dream house.

This is my lovely fridgerator, which is also pretty darn old.  The icemaker broke so hubs looked up the serial number to get a new part and we found out it was from 1992.  That makes it still running fine after 20 years. It is also kitchen aid and actually it really doesn’t look all that bad for being 20 years old just really basic and the compartments and shelves inside are kind of nice. 

Can you see my super cool 80’s desk thingy?  Who would fit into the little desk area, you would need the tiniest chair and really thin thighs.  I guess it isn’t too bad we use the desk top as a place for our ipod boom box (when we aren’t using it for white noise for Gabs) and it makes a good charging station. Although I really don’t understand the countertop selection, very fake, laminate, wood, well someone must have liked it because they used the same exact countertop in our family room bar.

There is my new dishwasher! It is nothing too fancy since we didn’t want to over spend if we are moving (I wanted this amazing LG one, but it was $400 more.) You can really see how small my dinning room is in this picture, it works but with every wall with either a door or some sort of walk way, the space is quite limited.

This is the view from the foyer, not the best view when you walk in the house, but you can see my new hood.  I know it doesn’t look all that interesting but you should have seen the old one.  I just noticed I usually have some decorative towels on the oven door, they must be in the wash.

So not a whole lot done here, but when I do something amazing you will know where I started from. Ok, so only two rooms left on the home tour (upstairs bathroom and familyroom.)  I’m currently working on the family room so I might wait on that one, but I’ll show you the bathroom next.  Let’s just say that it needs a lot of help!

Dana