Kitchen Tour & Makeover

I love my “new to me” kitchen.  A couple of months ago, we decided to hire someone to paint our cabinets white.  I think it’s made a big difference and is much more my style.

We hired our good friend, Bob, to paint our cabinets.  I did a lot of research on doing it yourself vs. hiring out and hands down, hiring out is the way to go for people like us.  We have no time, no skills required to do it, and had you seen the set up that Bob did, that was worth it alone.  Here’s what our house looked like for 3-4 days.

I had also planned to look into counter tops and back splash depending on what the cabinets ended up looking like.  As soon as it was revealed and I saw the white cabinets, I told myself I definitely wanted to change the back splash.  I was pleasantly surprised that the counter tops went so well, which was nice because new counter tops would have probably been too expensive.

Well, a couple of weeks went by and the white back splash started to grow on me.  Every time someone would come over, I’d tell them about getting new back splash and they disagreed and thought it looked good with the white.  So, we’ve decided to keep it for now.  I eventually think I’ll want a neutral stone back splash, but we’ll see.

I also hadn’t planned on changing the hardware, but held up a stainless steel knob just to see what it might look like and fell in love.  I changed all the hardware to stainless steel.  I ordered the knobs and pulls online.  The knobs went in pretty easy, minus a few hard to get out old knobs.  But the pulls were a beating.  The place I ordered them from did not have a stencil for me to use to know where to drill the holes.  And the universal one that Lowes had did not have the measurement for the pulls I had ordered.

So, I did my own measurements and drilled my own holes on the stencil!!!  Not gonna lie, I was pretty proud of myself.  I drilled most of them in, but needed Ryan for some of them that were too hard to drill through.  My DIY proud moment…

Here are a few other pictures of the BEFORE…

Bob also fixed the bowed shelves in our cabinets, as well as painting the inside.  And he replaced 2 drawers that the boys had broken. #momlife

Here are some pictures of the AFTER…

The great thing about redoing a room is you get to re-organize too.  I had to take out everything from the cabinets so it gave me a chance to purge A TON of things and organize it neatly.  If there is one thing I’ve learned from being a home owner for 9+ years, it’s that you really don’t need as much stuff as you have.  I purged everything on this table…and more that’s not seen.

It also makes you clean behind your fridge..yikes!  Now I clean behind my fridge regularly.

Here is an example of one of our organized cabinets.  This stores our vitamins and health/workout supplements.  Above that are baking goods…you know, to balance it all out 🙂

I also organized under our sink and LOVE the way it is set up.  I store a lot of cleaning products under here.  I installed this Lazy Susan to hold my daily cleaning products and it’s the best thing I’ve done organizationally.

I clean my kitchen throughout the day, but I always clean it after dinner/before bed.  My kitchen cleaning routine includes:

-Cleaning up from dinner

-Do dishes and load dishwasher (some stuff I hand wash and let dry on the counter)

-Wipe down counters and oven

-Wipe down dinner table

-Sweep floors

-Light candles!

And a look at it during the day when it’s not in use (which is approximately 1 hour of the day)

The decor I added to the corner is all from Hobby Lobby.  I try to keep my counters bare since the space to prep/cook is limited.

I really love how it turned out and it was definitely worth the time and money put into it.  Hope you enjoyed a peek into our kitchen!