Total Home Makeover: My Kitchen Remodel Part 1

by Natalie Stanley

2 Materials

$300

2 Months

Medium

The first big DIY project for me in my total home make over endeavor (an ongoing process) was to remodel (and ‘vintagize’ - just made that word up) the kitchen. I want a farmhouse, country, vintage feeling kitchen.

total home makeover my kitchen remodel part 1, home decor, home improvement, kitchen cabinets, kitchen design, painting

Step 1: Tell my mom I am going to redo her kitchen.

That went over better than I expected. I don’t think she really realized what I meant until I started to gut the cabinets.

I kept the top cabinets in and painted them white. I plan to replace the door knobs. I think changing to white made an instant improvement. Made them look clean, fresh and a bit more elegant. They were the same brown as the bottom cabinets.

Step 2: Gut the kitchen. I did this myself – all 4 foot 9 inches of me. The kitchen was your basic 1980s wall of top cabinets and bottom cabinets with a dishwasher, stove and fridge.

The bottom cabinets and sink are out and the walls painted.

I like sunny county, farmhouse style kitchens so I decided to paint three walls yellow to define the ‘kitchen’ area of the room and I am keeping the window wall white. I did this mainly because it kind of defines the eating area and also because it maintains the smooth flow into the dinning and living rooms. I chose yellow because it is sunny and allows the white cabinets to stand out, and I like yellow.

This kitchen is also big and has a wall of three windows.

One of the main instigating forces that propelled me to jump in and do this remodel at this time is that there was damage to the floor that had been repaired. Note the door – this leads to the garage. In a future post I will show the new door that ended up replacing this one, and, the entire remodel that is going to happen behind that door.

With the new flooring.

This flooring was on clearance, very cheap, and actually the color turned out to be better than I thought it would. You can see from the pictures how this change instantly gave the kitchen a warm cozy feeling. I really loved how it turned out. Note the windows between the cabinets. That will be changed out for a single window, because behind that window another remodel will be taking place.

I did the whole kitchen remodel myself. It was not an easy project and required research, patience and a lot of breaks. I did it over the summer and it took about 2 months. Physically the gutting was hardest. Skill wise I found the flooring to be difficult in that it was something I had never done before (laminate interlocking), the flooring was a cheaper product so the interlocking was I think more difficult. Once I got the hang of it it was easier. I loved the outcome and now have an open slate for my 'new' kitchen. I will be posting the cabinet makeovers, I will be using all vintage and all free standing, including the sink. Please visit my blog for a more detailed post about this remodel.

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2 of 3 comments

Natalie Stanley on Sep 06, 2016
Thank you. I hope to post part 2 the cabinets very soon.

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Cori Widen on Sep 07, 2016
It's looking AWESOME. Wow - keep up the great work.

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