Kitchen Renovation- Before and After photos

After month and MONTHS of talking about and planning and then finally doing the kitchen renovation I'm finally posting pictures.

Just as a reminder this was a total gut job. Pretty much everything was torn out and replaced during the renovation. Also, we didn't do any of it ourselves. I'm sure that Kristian could have done parts of it but neither of us had the desire to try to tackle any part of this ourselves. Fortunately Kristian is friends with a contractor and he was able to cut us a great deal. I'm not one to discuss money but I know there will be people that are curious of the cost. I don't have it broken down to the penny but I can tell you it was in the $13K range. That includes everything from appliances (which we got a fantastic deal on), tile, granite, fixtures, cabinets, electrical, paint and of course labor. When it comes to the cost of most kitchen renovations I think we got a helluva deal and it was worth every. single. penny.

As for the time frame, we were originally told two weeks, which I never believed would actually happen. And it didn't. Took almost exactly a month. Part of the delay was due to having two of the cabinets ordered in the wrong size and needing to wait for the new ones to deliver. Needing to wait for the tiles to set and grout to dry and then just other typical unforeseen delays. It was quite annoying but again totally worth it.

I've posted this photo before but here is the inspiration photo that Kristian found online (I apologize but I don't know the site it was pulled from. He google imaged townhouse kitchens). We basically wanted our kitchen to look exactly like this and as you can see from our After photos we got pretty damn close. To be honest I like ours better :)

Inspiration Photo

 

Now here are the before photos of our super small, no counter space, circa early 90's kitchen that we both hated.

This was taken after we had emptied everything out prior to demolition. We did have new appliances that we gave to our contractor to use in one of his flips and he used that towards some of our labor costs.

You can see the doorway that lead into our dining room. We closed off this doorway and added a pass through instead. This was the best way for us to get extra counter space.

The one good feature of our kitchen, the large window.

Here is the other doorway that leads to our entryway. This doorway stayed.

Here is a photo after the demo took place. They left the refrigerator for us to put in the dining room so we could have that during the reno.

Here's another view. The cat loved to photobomb all my pictures.

The pot rack was pretty much the only thing that stayed.

 

 

I decided not to post all of the progress pictures because that's probably very boring to look at but I did take them and did post many of them on Instagram during the process. If you want to see them you can follow me on IG (SEP0522)

 

And here are the AFTER photos. It really is hard to believe it's the same room.

 

This is the view from the doorway which is to the right after you walk in our front door. We got brand new stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, travertine tiles and espresso colored cabinets.

This is the view from the wall with the window. As you can see the second doorway is now closed up and we have the pass through which I love. You can now see into the dining and living room while cooking which is good for keeping an eye on Hunter and you can also see the t.v. from here. We made the counter part of the pass through large enough so that we can sit food and drinks on there when entertaining. As you can see we now have so much more useable counterspace than before. We also have a much larger refrigerator which the freezer on the bottom (I'm still trying to get used to that).

We added cabinets and a counter underneath the potrack. This is where we store a lot of our food since we don't have a pantry (one thing I wish we had but there was no room for). This also gives us additional counter space.

We added under the cabinet lighting on a dimmer switch which we both love. This is a photo taken at night. Halpert loves the new countertops as well.

 

Now for some close ups.

 

Here's a better shot of the granite and the tile design.

Here is our new larger, deeper sink and our "sexy" faucet. Kristian insisted on this $250 faucet because he said it looked "sexy". He's weird. But it is a nice faucet.

This is a better shot of the top of the cabinets as well as the new recessed lighting in the ceilings. This lighting is also on a dimmer switch. We're basically obsessed with having dimmer switches and most of our lights have one. I should point out that our cabinets are really high up which is hard for me being vertically challenged and all. Fortunately Kristian does most of the cooking and it gets me out of putting away the dishes :)

 

Here is our new tiled floor with a Moxie photo bomb.

 

We added a glass front cabinet for all of our glasses and to break things up a bit.

We also spray painted a glass frame to create a chalkboard so we can start keeping a weekly menu or grocery list.

 

You'll notice I didn't post a photo of the wall with the window and that's because we are still deciding what to do with that wall. We've talked about adding some sort of bench under the window so there is a place for Hunter and I to sit and watch Kristian cook. We also need to get new blinds and maybe some artwork. So no big changes on that wall yet.

 

I think we did pretty well with recreating our inspiration photo. We are thrilled with our new kitchen and love cooking in it now.