The Kitchen......

We all know that the kitchen is the most important room in the house. Not only do we prepare and cook our meals here (yum!), feed the boyz their delicious kibble here, pile our mail on the table in this room, and stack our shoes by the kitchen door…. it’s also the place everyone seems to congregate when we do entertain. This room was also one of the more challenging rooms in the house to remodel. As you can see from the BEFORE pictures below, the wallpaper left a little to be desired. It was an early nineties red with bold white dogwood flowers throughout. The light fixtures were also the original contractors choices…meaning cheap and low quality. The appliances were a mixed group of black and white and the countertops were white, chipped, and scratched… The one "plus" this room had already were the beautiful hardwood floors. (Hint: If you click on the photos you can get a better view!)

Instead of going through the horrible task of removing the wallpaper, we made the decision to paint the wallpaper. This is a multi-step process as you first have to paint the paper with oil-based primer...in our case with the red and white flowers…it took two coats (three in some areas!). At this point you check the seams in the wall paper, mud those that are obvious and sand smooth. After this was complete, we then painted two coats of our latex paint and two coats of the woodwork paint. Jon replaced the light fixtures with something a little more modern. We replaced the appliances with new white and upgraded pieces. We changed the hardware on the cabinets and doors. But the most amazing change of all….TADA….the counter tops!!! We went with neutral colored quartz called Silestone. It was not in the original plan to replace the counter tops but Jon (the real cook in the house) really wanted them and I am so very glad we did! As you can see from the AFTER pictures below, it definitely looks like a different room. I am very pleased with the outcome and can say that Jon and I both enjoy working in the kitchen now! What do you think?