Kitchen Update: We Have Cabinets!

FINALLY.

After owning our home for 10 months and living in it for 7 (!!!) months, we’re finally making moves on the kitchen. 🙂 Our floors are finished and the cabinets are hung! Obviously, there’s still work to be done. Temporarily, we’re using melamine board as countertops.

We still need to…

• decide on our countertops
• install our farmhouse sink & faucet
• choose new appliances (fridge, range, hood, and dishwasher)
• install cabinet hardware (pulls & knobs)
• decide on lighting (pendants above island & light above sink

As you can tell, we left the existing sink in place. We need our kitchen to be usable, and I literally don’t think I would be able to function without a kitchen sink lol. SO, once we order the countertops & farmhouse sink, we’ll demo the old cabinet and install the new one.

For now, that’s just a nice reminder of the orange countertops we left behind. 😉

Notice the cabinet pulls located in the center of the doors. REAL convenient.

And that carpet.. (yes, CARPET was in the kitchen. IDK.) We got quite the arm workout getting down to the subfloor in the kitchen. Picture patterned linoleum from 1970s adhered to the plywood below.. I STILL have nightmares about that phase of demo lol.

We created an open floor plan by removing a closet & pantry that were dividing the kitchen from the dining / living area. Man, it felt good to knock out those walls. It completely changed the flow of the house. I felt like Joanna Gaines you guys!!!

Don’t that carpet & wood panelling look real niiiiice? ..Maybe in the 70s it did haha!

We relocated the exhaust pipe so that it’d be on the back corner of the island. Eliminating it completely would have stretched our wallets a bit too thin. Even thought I didn’t *love* the idea of a column, it made the most sense.

We moved in & lived with our kitchen like this for a while. It wasn’t the worst thing ever.. I deep cleaned the heck out of those cabinets & countertops before using them. We never used the dishwasher. We laid down brown paper & industrial carpet in lieu of new laminate until a couple weekends ago. YEP. WE CRAY.

All our wall cabinets are white, so we chose to have an accent color for our island. The color is called “Rocky Mountain Sky,” and it turned out to be perfect for our color scheme!

PS – Lucy loves AC lol.

Same angle shot from before – this is where our island is now. Them walls are GONE!

Here’s the progress from an overall perspective.

Here’s a look at where our fridge, hood & new range will be!

Sure has changed a ton! *praise hands emoji*

A few people have DM’d me on IG asking why we’re piece-mealing the kitchen. Why didn’t we just order the countertops at the same time as the cabinets? TBH, we don’t want to take out loans for something that we don’t absolutely need. So this is just a PSA – if you want something, but you can’t afford it right now, it’s okay to wait. Material things add up quickly. Make a budget and plan out the next few months.

Ryan and I had fun doing all this work ourselves (minus the drywall & exhaust pipe), and we made some funny memories we’ll always remember.

I’ve also really enjoyed seeing what white countertops would look like haha. Originally, I thought they would be right up my alley.. but now that I see the melamine, I’m rethinking that! It’s been helpful for me planning-wise to take things slowly.

details:

cabinets: KraftMaid “Hayward Maple”

laminate floors: Pergo Outlast – Vintage Tobacco Oak

well.. that’s about all I can link for y’all right now haha. This week I’m sharing a mood board & some inspo pics for the finishes. Stay tuned! 🙂

Have a great week!