Our Kitchen Renovation: Before

Our Kitchen Renovation: Before

Ahhhh, we’re soooo excited that we’re starting to move forward with our kitchen renovation!! When we bought our new house last summer, we did so with the intention of knocking down some walls and opening up the whole kitchen/dining room/living room, so we started working on the plans the second we got the keys to the house!

We just met with our contractor again last week and things are starting to move forward, yay!! We had decided it was best to wait until after Joey was born but before she starts to be mobile. It’s going to be so great to be able to see what she and Ruby the dog are up to, from pretty much anywhere on the main floor. We still don’t know exactly when construction will really begin, because it depends on a million factors, but I think it’ll be before summer. Over the next few weeks we’ll show you our plans in a series of posts and then keep you updated on the progress as we make decisions and move forward with the big project.

First let’s start with a reminder of what our space looked like when we moved in. (I was going to show you current pictures, but that would mean actually cleaning the kitchen and that’s not going to happen these days!!!)

Our current kitchen is small with very little counter and storage space, and we’re constantly bumping into each other when we try to cook. It also has one of Andy’s biggest pet peeves: a corner sink. Now, I didn’t really have a huge issue with corner sinks prior to this kitchen, but Andy just cannot stand them. I had one in an old apartment that was fine, but this one, ugh, this one is so tight that you can’t get quite close enough to the sink and you have to sort of lean sideways to reach it, which means my back always hurts when I hand-wash dishes (and I spend A LOT of time washing baby bottles these days).

We actually like the look of the existing wood cabinets and asked the previous owner if she knew where they were from. We thought maybe we could repurpose what’s here and add to it to save money, but she said the cabinets were already here when she bought the house 17 years ago. That means the doors are missing the modern convenience of soft closing hinges, and the shelves are totally wobbly/threatening to collapse.

So what are we going to do??? The best thing is to take a look from the perspective of where the living room couch is, looking towards the back of the house with the dining room on the right, and the kitchen behind all those walls on the left.

So the plan is… Goodbye walls! We’re knocking down all the walls, which will open the whole space up to the living room, yay! Also, you can’t see it well in this photo, but the ceiling in the dining room and kitchen is lower than in the living room, so we’re going to raise it to match. And we’re expanding the kitchen across that whole back wall into the current dining room. We decided that we don’t really need a formal dining room, and instead we’re going to add an island with seating. It’s going to be awesome.

Next week we’ll show you more about the layout and design plans in greater detail!