Making Our Home: THE KITCHEN

When we first purchased our home, there were some things I liked about the kitchen and other's that I knew had to go!

Here are the pictures we took the day we closed on the house...

 

View from the living room looking into the kitchen.

I really liked the windows in the kitchen, and we liked the floor.

The light fixtures, curtains, wallpaper AND wallpaper border we did not like!

We also liked the size of the kitchen.

It seems like SO much happens in our kitchen...school work, art, meals, etc. so we were thrilled with the size of the kitchen.

The fridge will go in the empty space here.

 

This wall was pretty messed up with holes, and it didn't help that this was the piece of wall where I quickly learned that our walls (none of them!) had ever been primed before the wallpaper was hung in 1987.  So the wallpaper was glued directly to the drywall, and had hung there for almost 30 years and wasn't coming down without a fight.  I lost the fight with the wallpaper and between the holes in the wall we struggled to patch and the top layer of drywall I removed WITH the wallpaper (oops!), we ended up tearing down the above pictured drywall and having new sheetrock hung!

In the picture above and next few pictures you can see where we steamed the wallpaper border off the walls.  Then we sanded with an electric sander the seams of the rest of the wallpaper (since it obviously wasn't going anywhere).  Then we used the miracle paint/primer I've mentioned before-Benjamin Moore's Fresh Start.  This allows you to be able to paint over the wallpaper. 

 

The next step was picking a paint color.  I had originally picked the Benjamin Moore color Woodlawn Blue, but when we painted a small area I became nervous that it wasn't the right color.  John patiently tried MANY samples of paint with me on the walls.  In the end we went back to my original choice of Woodlawn Blue, and I LOVE it!  It looks different in different light, and I like that about it.

The picture below is obviously when we were painting, but it's the color I feel it looks like most of the time.

This picture gives it more of a green hue.

We ended up having to remove the wallpaper around the can lights because it was loose at the seams.  This was a huge pain, but we survived! :)

Primed and looking much better.

This was after we had this piece of sheetrock replaced.  Now it was ready to be painted and primed.

We had to have the main window replaced in the bay window.

We also had blinds hung in the 4 kitchen windows and did away with those ugly valances.

The old window.

 

I absolutely love our kitchen.  We have more dreams for our kitchen, as well.  We hope and plan to replace both light fixtures in the kitchen for an updated look.  Eventually we would LOVE to add an island.  We definitely have the space, and I got spoiled to having an island to work/prep on at our previous house, so we hope to add that down the road.

For now, I am SO, SO thrilled with how we took our kitchen from it's blue wallpaper to Woodlawn Blue walls.  It feels so light and airy to me, and I love being in there. 

So here are our "after" pictures!

Door leads into the dining room.

 

see...plenty of room for an island...eventually!

again, the door goes into the dining room

In our new kitchen at this house, we now have room for a bigger table (we formerly had a round kitchen table that sat four).  Now that we have 5 family members that sit at the table, and soon 6 we knew we needed a bigger table especially now that we had the space, so this summer we found this table and chairs, and I think it fit the look of our kitchen great!  It's so nice to have more space around the table.

 

the middle window behind the table is the kitchen window we had replaced.