Spiffing up the Kitchen

Someday, we will totally renovate the kitchen. I think :) But that day is off in the very distant future, so in the meantime we've done some very affordable changes to improve the look and feel of the kitchen. I mean, we use this room many, many times a day, and its a hardworking part of our house. So it's worth the money to make the room a little more aesthetically pleasing, fresh and comfortable in the meantime.

I tend to want to wait to share rooms until they are 100% done. Which means that I dont really share them, because I struggle with saying that a room is done. Even once we've fixed things up, painted, brought in furniture, etc, there are always things that I want to tweak, fix up, improve, etc. One of my favorite blogs is the The Nesting Place, and her mantra of "It Doesn't Have to Be Perfect to Be Beautiful" has really been speaking to me lately. So in the spirit of un-perfection, here's what our kitchen looks like today. :)



Just kidding. That's what it looked like when we bought the house. It's so...woodsy, right? I've been slowly painting the cabinets, starting with all of the lower cabinets. My goal is to just get them painted, so I haven't worried about using super duper durable paints. I've just used what I have on hand - Kilz Primer and some white semi gloss paint. They look a million times better, in my personal opinion.



A few weekends ago, we replaced the cracked, peeling and very, very stained linoleum floor in here. We found stick on vinyl tiles that were made in long strips to look a bit like hardwood floors. We banged out removing the old floor, cleaning and patching the linoleum underneath and laying the new floor in a weekend. I was so proud of us. Now we're working on new baseboards, which, although only primed so far, are a significant improvement over the industrial vinyl "baseboards" that were there before.



Stick-on tiles aren't the most durable long term solution, but I love how much they improved this room in the short term. And I love that Keilana (and Javi) can crawl around on a nice, clean, pretty floor. Hello beautiful!




I've painted all the trim in here, and its made a big difference. We also had that big window replaced last summer, which is some of the best money we've ever spent. Having a window that does not leak and opens completely, with a screen? Now that's luxury living. :)

So obviously, next up is painting the upper cabinets. I'm excited to get that done, as it seems like each time that something gets painted, this room gets brighter and nicer. Still, even with only half the cabinets painted, I'm loving how much better everything looks.



We replaced the faucet last summer. It is the height of luxury: it's high enough to fit big pots under, pulls out to fill up things on the counter or rinse out the sink, and has a sprayer which I just discovered works wonders for cleaning chunks of food off of little baby bibs. I love it. And yes, those are snowflake Christmas lights still hanging in the window. ;)



There isn't a ton of counter space on this side of the kitchen, which is why I love the glass cooktop. It allows us just a little bit more space for cutting and prepping and chopping. Plus, it is hands down one of my favorite things to clean. I know, I'm weird. :)

This corner is quite cluttered right now. It's a hardworking part of the kitchen (although just about every corner is in this little kitchen) but it's also up out of reach of the kids, so those shelves and the top of the fridge get loaded with things that need to stay out of the reach of little fingers.



Most of our dry goods hang out on these shelves, along with the radio, some miscellaneous stuff, cook books, the sugary treats basket and a box of cereal that doesn't fit in the cabinet. Randomness. :) I'll address that all at some point. I think someday we are going to fill this wall with builtin shelves to maximize the storage on this side.



That crown molding is going to be a pain to paint. I actually asked Lover if it made sense to take it all down, and put up prepainted new crown. He assured me that it didn't. :) Someday we want to take out that tall cabinet, and the chimney that runs behind it, and widen that doorway to almost twice the size. That will hopefully help with the bottleneck that a 24inch doorway into the kitchen always creates.


So that's where we are with the kitchen. A new window and faucet, some clean, uncracked floors, and a lot of white paint. It's a significant improvement, wouldn't you agree?