the kitchen chronicles

I know I’ve been virtually M.I.A. lately, but with good reason.  I am getting ready to undertake a major project.  My kitchen is about to receive a well deserved facelift.  Since I am not hiring this work out, it is going to take me some time to complete. 
Rather than take a before picture and then magically come up with an after picture, (it’s just all too much work to be reduced to a couple of pictures)  I thought I would chronicle the process.
Let’s start right from the beginning shall we?  Here is the ‘BEFORE before” picture.  I call it that because this picture was taken when I purchased my home almost 3 years ago.  This is the entire kitchen as the previous owners had it.  (Their kitchen table, not mine).  See this blue room in the forefront of the picture?  



























This room was used as a sitting room off the kitchen. (WHY ?  I don't know!) …………….. But I had a vision.  This room was about to become a larger part of the kitchen.

Here is a shot of the kitchen from another angle.  Keep your eye on the pantry cupboards in the right wall.   Now lets move on!

Let’s start by ripping out the parquet flooring in the blue room and remove all the ceramic tiles in the kitchen area.  As a matter of fact, we removed all the flooring on the entire main floor.

Unblueing the blue room.  You can also see the new subfloor that has gone in and in the process I decided to widen the entrance between the blue room and the kitchen. 

SO… out comes the pantry and some walls.  The opening between the blue room and front hallway was also closed off. Now for the fun part!

In goes a beautiful archway to open the kitchen wide up. You can see the wall being built to close off the blue room and hallway.

The entry to the kitchen (beside the fridge) was also widened. You can see the hardwood flooring making it’s way down the hallway.

The arch with a little more detail. The popcorn ceiling in the blue room was also scraped off a few days later to match the smooth ceiling in the kitchen area.

This island was put together with cabinets bought at Home Depot, then covered with finished plywood and MDF.

For a little added punch, I painted the island red.

You can see the new place for the pantry (to the left) where the entry was closed off.  I can also stop calling the blue room “the blue room”, as it’s currently a nice soft yellow/gold. My little kitchen table appeared totally lost in that area and has since been replaced.

So here is a shot of the arch, all finished. All previous tiny baseboards were replaced with 8" baseboards.

There’s a story behind this interesting ceiling mount for my pendant lights.  When the old owner had their kitchen table where the island is now, they had a medallion and a chandelier. As hard as I tried I couldn’t scrape or sand that glue off the ceiling once the medallion was removed.  How to hide the hideous glue ?  Build 3 squares in an interesting pattern.  It hides the mess and looks like it was meant to be!

So believe it or not……. here is where my renovation STARTS.  This is the kitchen I have been living with now for 2 years.  What you HAVEN’T seen is the dreamy plywood cupboards and tile countertop I’ve also been living with for 2 years!!!   Auughhhh!   Well their time has come.
This is where the KITCHEN CHRONICLES begins……  Stay tuned!!