Phase 1 Kitchen Renovation = Complete!

Here's a story about a kitchen that was outdated and neglected, until we came a long. We took this kitchen and gave her a make over that would make anyone want to cook in here! Ok, well maybe it's not THAT dramatic, but we did just complete Phase 1 of our kitchen renovation. Let me tell you about what we did.

Here's the before:

First, we took out all the cabinets and appliances. And when I say "we", I actually mean DH and his coworker, JG. JG is great with helping us on projects like this because he's flipped 3 houses and we don't really know what we're doing. That time "we" meant DH and me (but more so me).

The guys then took part of the wall down to the studs. They had to do this because we were moving the dishwasher from the right side of the sink to the left side and adding a pendant light above the sink. Exposing the wiring, allowed FIL to easily reroute everything.

Since the flooring (old, gross laminate flooring) was already ripped up, I got the excellent job of removing all the glue from the sub flooring. Prepping the floor is important because we are putting tile down and we need to make sure everything is level so the tile will go down evenly.

After about 2 hours of trying to remove the glue I needed one of these (or two, or three). Make sure to keep beer in stock. You need it to keep your sanity. Wine is usually my first choice, except I didn't want to be caught sleeping on the job...

Then when I woke up the next morning my kitchen looked like this! HA! I wish. After almost 10 hours of cutting, drilling, screwing and lifting, everything was in it's place. I love my new cabinets and can't wait to complete phase 2 - countertops and hardware!

Here's a close up of the cabinet finish. Read all about our cabinets here.

Phase 2 should be coming later this week and early next week so stay tuned.