Ave's Kitchen Nightmares...

Kitchen Nightmares... Turn into kitchen loveliness?

We haven't quite finished the kitchen yet....we'll get there, once I can get a hold of someone to put some cursed tiles up as a backsplash.  The kitchen has been the source of a heck of a lot stress, and tears, and just... bleh.  I'm not made for setbacks, even if they are minor, and I swear I never want to go to Home Depot again.  I'm ashamed to admit I may have had a fit in the plumbing aisle...

Aaanyway, it's sad that we put our faith in a contractor (who had done work for my family before) and he was quite unreliable, and never finished what he started.  He just kind of...disappeared.  So we were left scrambling to find people to finish the jobs he started.  Anyway, take a look at what we did below...

Do you like the view?  ;)

It all started with a heck of a lot of cleaning... the previous owners weren't the tidiest people in the world, in fact the cupboards were all stained.

 We decided to hide the cheap laminate stuff on the peninsula...with my fave, white paint.

 I think it turned out pretty good - in fact the thing is almost unrecognisable!

 Anthropologie provided us with some knobs for the cupboards, luckily most of them were on sale...they get a bit pricey (10.00$ per knob...hm)

 John removed all the cupboards, and numbered them so we knew which order to put them back in. 

There is no photographic proof, but I actually used a "Random orbital sander" to remove all the weird stains and the cheap looking finish on the cupboards.

 We stained them then with a light white wash for a bit of a shabby chic feel, and put the knobs on...

 As you can see all the tiles were removed (they still are...grumble grumble), but we got excited and started putting things in the cupboards.

 Down below all the handles match, thank you Ikea (don't get me started on them right now though)

 And here's what the tea station looks like.  Yes, I said tea station...

After a while, we got Mr. Stucco to close up that hideous window and leave just a little one to get some light through.  Nice, right? So much better than it was.

Then came the new tap...which quite frankly makes a huge difference. The sink is kind of hideous because the previous owners stained it with something that neither CLR or Bleach will remove...We're working on it...

 After that came the fun part...and when I say fun, I mean not fun at all.  Our fantastic contractor (cough) had removed the old microwave (it was beyond saving) but also (for some reason) removed the cupboard above.  It seems nobody makes cupboards of that size anymore, so we had to make one ourselves (with a little help of the neighbours).  This is me attempting to cut out a hole in mdf.  Not that fun. 

The good news is - John is awesome and hung it up!  The new microwave is snug underneath...

 And that's how much better it looks now!  Just waiting to finish up those drawers soon... Unfortunately it may be another "make them yourself" job as the old ones were quite warped. 

 To finish off this post... John got a nice birthday present from my fams... a Kitchen Aid stand mixer that he had been eyeing for a while.  As you can see, he was rather pleased.

Then he got artsy.  Giggle.

The best thing was when J just stood there with his hands on his hips looking at the kitchen, and said "I think we're going to have one of those kitchens like they have in magazines".

Well that just made my day!

More to come...of course. 

Thanks for reading, and for the nice comments!

xox

Ave