Kitchen Progress

The day before I left for Ontario, Brian completely demo'd the kitchen. Everything was 100% packed up and here we go...! (Here are some before pics)

Header, coming out!

Everything is gone, except for the area holding up the sink & plumbing.

Our house was built in 1952, and the kitchen was original to the house...so 61 years old!! As you might imagine, when we tore everything out, we found some treasures from loooong ago behind the backsplash area. I adore finding old crap like this, I just find it so interesting!

 

1. A business card for a realtor, from back when phone numbers were only 5 digits.
2. Wylers lemonade. Based on the packaging, it was from about  1981, as the expiration date on it was 2/28/82 - you have no idea how tempted I was to mix it up and see if it was still good! Haha!! I didn't though:-D
3 & 4. Front and back of coupons. The wording is hilarious - "Mr Grocer, we will redeem..." "Take this to your Grocer". We don't have Grocer's anymore. The world is so much less personal these days, even with connectivity online and everything. Apparently caffeine was spelled caffein in the 70's. These coupons expired on 2/1/71. (8yrs and 1day before I was born!)

While I was in ON, things got REALLY busy for Brian. He ended up having to tend to quite a bit of our personal paperwork, and work with Woodard was pouring in, so he's been swamped, day in and out!

Our kitchen ideas - we have a limited budget, so Brian will make the cabinets himself. However, solid, nice wood is pretty expensive...a high end kitchen these days is made of the same wood that the doors are made from...

But we are not high people:-) Additionally, we would like to never sell this house, even if we move out of it - it will become a rental. For a rental, you want nice and functional and indestructible, not really "high end" - at least not in our neighbourhood/price point.

So we decided to do a white melamine inside, with wood "ends" on all visible edges, and wood doors made in a missionary style, if you are familiar with that look. Doing the white on the inside saves tons of money, while, when all the doors are closed, it will have a high end appearance. So we will enjoy the kitchen as long as we live here, and then it will become a very functional rental.

So despite being super busy while we were gone, he got the cabinets built (boxes only, not the door fronts - that will come later), and got all the top ones installed!

This is what I came home to...

LOVE it!!

 You can see the plan perhaps now...it will be a 3 sided kitchen, instead of just across the back wall with makeshift stuff on the other 2 walls.

He has the fridge pulled out right now. He's building it in with pantry cupboards on either side, and a cabinet above

Upper cabinets on the "stove's wall" Never before seen!! We will do a microwave range above the stove, which will be the only new appliance our budget will support at this time (we don't already own one, so it's necessary). As appliances need replacing, we will get something more on trend and matching. We currently have a mishmash of everything:-)

The front edges of the melamine are trimmed with this pale/natural wood. This will be the colour of the doors - pale maple. We decided to go with a pale wood, as we didn't want to darken or shrink our space too much, and felt like we weren't good enough at painting to get a professional looking job on a painted cabinet (we do like the "mushroom" colour that is available these days at cabinet stores). I think the natural wood will be good for our space, and have a look of good quality about them.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love that hardworking man of mine?! I asked him who helped him install the uppers - he gives me a "duh" tone of voice and says "no one. I know how to hang cabinets" haha!! Well of course he does. He's amazing! So grateful for his mad skills. He's going to save us a bundle of money (like 5 to 7 thousand dollars!!!) and it's going to look great!