Through the House Thursday-kitchen remodel

I LOVE having our own home. I love being able to do more than just rearrange furniture when the room isn't working for us. Our downstairs family room/now turned office was one of the first remodels we tackled, but I still don't have any decent photos of it yet, so I'm going to wait before I post on that.

Recently, though, I was tired of rearranging and moving things to try and make things work in another room of the house-the kitchen. Don't get me wrong, I have a pretty nice kitchen, it just has a few quirks that were making it difficult to work in. The most difficult quirk is that it is located on the second floor of our house. Yes, I know, our house is upside-down. Lugging the groceries up stairs isn't quite as annoying as taking a wedding cake down the stairs. The kitchen also isn't all that large, whose is? So a lot of my cake decorating (cake pans, plates, etc) and canning supplies were kept in the garage, but as I needed them more and more often, and being too lazy to go up and down the flight of stairs in the rain or snow, I found myself leaving them in the kitchen and trying to find a place to hide them. It wasn't working-definitely, not working. And don't get me started on the weird, dark wood ceiling.

So, with a $450 budget, I decided to see what we could do. Enter my handy-dandy hubby with his power tool skills and my trying-to-be-patient-and-not-rush-this-job staining skills, and we now have a kitchen that is both beautiful and functional. Since I spend about 50% of my weekend time in there, that makes for a much happier me. :o) Here are some of the before and after shots.

The far end of our kitchen is supposed to be a breakfast nook. This is what it looked like when we first moved in. We didn't have an extra table, so I used a card table. No one has ever used this as a breakfast nook. Ever.

Our dining room is part of the living room. It is open on 2 sides, one side has a window, and one side is a half wall where the stairway goes down stairs. Since there is no place in there for the china cabinet, it was put in here. As you can see, it doesn't quite fit properly.

Here I tried moving it to the other wall. In the foreground you can see the table Mike made for this room. It's used more as an extra counter-top than a table. This is where I do all my cake decorating. The china cabinet drawers housed a lot of my decorating tools, but as you can see, I needed additional storage. I had already started clearing things out of the china cabinet when I remembered to take some pictures. This is just ugly!! I can't believe I lived with it like this for almost a month before I finally decided it was time to renovate.Don't worry, I didn't get rid of the china cabinet. I love it too much. It found a new home in our daughter's room as a toy cabinet. She has lots of drawers for the little things and display area for her pretty stuff. I'll have to take pictures of it to post later.

We picked up some unfinished cabinets, stain, counter-top and wood from our local home improvement store. I stained the pieces and then Mike and I put it all together.

Since the window is lower than the cabinets, we decided to simply make a desk area there. Mike put a shelf up underneath for additional storage.

I used some material I already had and an old, tension shower rod to hide the clutter underneath. I like the fact that I can change this out with the seasons if I choose.

This is where Mike's wood working skills came in. He took some simple pieces of wood and made this awesome set of display shelves for me to match the ones he made earlier on the other side of the window.I love that my teacup collection is out where they can be seen and used.

Sorry about the poor picture, but this is what it looks like all finished.I LOVE it!!! The cabinet on the far right is all drawers, and I was able to totally organize my cake decorating supplies. My favorite and unexpected part of the whole remodel is the desk area under the window. This is where I now sit to do any of the fondant work for my cakes. I used to stand at the table, and I still do for most of the cake work, but for the sculpting, I get to sit there and watch the birds or, this time of year, the snow fall. Have I mentioned that I love this? I am so excited that we were able to do this for under $450.

I need to figure out a window treatment. This is one room that changes with the seasons so I'd like to find something that is pretty neutral that doesn't cover too much of the window. Someday I'd like to figure out a way to change the ceiling, but for now I think we've learned to "tune it out". :o)

Anyway, I better close for now. Thanks for taking a peek at our "new" kitchen.

Till next time...God's love and blessings!