Kitchen Remodel

When we moved into the house, the kitchen had a double sliding door and a counter top that jutted out into the middle of the kitchen. this made the kitchen feel much smaller and the whole set up was very cramped, especially when the dishwasher door was open. The dishwasher's position made it impossible to open cabinet doors and to lean over to put dishes away in upper cabinets. It was really annoying! 

We had a professional kitchen designer come in and give us some ideas and quotes for what we could do. Our favorite design she came up with was our starting point for our current design, but if we hired the company to do everything it would have cost us over $22,000! And that was WAY out of our price range. Another hiccup was that there were safety warnings for how close the oven could be to the dishwasher and sink, so we had to go back to the drawing board and be creative.

So we made a plan to get the kitchen we wanted by hiring contractors for some of the work and we designed and installed the cabinets ourselves using IKEA's modular kitchen system. 

First, we hired a contractor to remove the sliding door and replace it with a normal glass door.

Then Aaron and his dad removed the cabinets and appliances and put down the laminate wood flooring (which Aaron found on sale for $.49 a square foot!). At first my ideas, e.g. replacing the door and installing an oven separate from the stove top were considered too expensive and labor-intensive, but they ended up the most sensible in the end because of cabinet sizes and safety regulations :)

Unfortunately, the hexagon tile backsplash (which I love!) was extremely labor-intensive and if I had known how difficult it would have been for Aaron I would have stayed with my original choice of subway tile. 

Another thing I'd like to mention is that we chose wood countertops because they were so dang cheap! The entire countertop cost us less than $200. It looks beautiful but stain like no ones business. The silver lining is that you just sand the top and it looks brand new. So in the end they aren't that bad. I originally wanted quartz countertops, but we got to the end of our budget and decided to use the wood until we save up for quartz.

A few details that I love about my kitchen are:

IKEA drawers for spices.

The modular cabinet/drawer that fits under stove top is SUPER spacious.

Garbage/recycling drawer is amazing!

I love my huge farmhouse sink. Now I just need twin babies to bathe :)

Aaron made these open shelves according to my strict instructions...

Besides the beautiful hexagon tiles, I love these shelves that Aaron made next to the stove.

Gas stove top! We had to hire a plumber to create and move a gas line across the kitchen,
but it was worth it.

I really wanted leather handles and drawer-pulls, so that meant Aaron had to brainstorm how
to attach them to the IKEA cabinets. Isn't he the best? They actually cost less than metal.

It has taken us over a year to finish the kitchen, but it has been well worth the time and effort to get it how we (let's be honest, it's all me) wanted it. With the cost of the flooring, cabinets, contractor work, plumbing, electrical, appliances and backsplash it has cost us less than half of what we were quoted from the professional designer.

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