We are currently undergoing kitchen renovations. It is exciting and scary at the same time. I have been dying to get my kitchen re done for years. Budget didn't have room for it, until now. Last year we were getting ready to do the kitchen when the master bathroom had some major issues that needed attention. So here we are almost a year after the master bath is completed and I am getting my new kitchen. We chose Timber Barn to do the renovations since we loved how the bathroom turned out last year. Big changes are coming. The kitchen will set the stage for further changes on the main floor.
Below are the before pictures of the kitchen, family room and dining room. We have eliminated the formal dining room from the floor plan and moved the family room in its place. Now the entire back of the main floor will be kitchen and eating area.
The dining room as an actual dining room. Furniture is cleared out. Chandelier is gone and a flush mount light fixture is in its place. And right now its a cluttered mess and you don't need to see that.
The kitchen. My glorious, builders special kitchen. No expense was spent when they built this kitchen. LOL Overall it wasn't bad. But over the years I found the space was not very functional or planned out very well. This is looking from the stove towards the old family room.
The family room in its cluttered glory. Fireplace in the corner, Dalwhinnie's dog bed and her toys. A heavy and awkward coffee table that attracts dumping of clutter. etc.
The TV worked best in front of the window. We had tried other configurations. Just an overall awkward room to lay out furniture etc.
See the lovely green bin sitting on the counter? Thats because we had nowhere else to put it as underneath the sink there was an R/O unit that took up over half of the real estate in that cupboard. The garbage can and cleaning supplies took over the rest.
The kitchen table in front of the patio door was awkward at times as people would have to push a chair out of the way to get outside. The patio door was sticking and you literally got an upper arm workout opening and closing the door. The chandelier was never centred properly above the table.
And the day before renovations started we had everything cleared out. And unfortunately most of the stuff is in my living room, former dining room and now family room, basement and garage. And this does not count the van loads of stuff we brought to value village and furniture that we sold or gave away.
There were a number of things that frustrated the hell out of me when it came to our kitchen. The dated oak cabinets, most of the drawers were gorilla glued to hold them together. The massive space between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling, so much wasted space, and an awesome grease and grunge catcher. The oven has been non-operational since about February/March and the rest of the stove was literally falling apart. The dishwasher was making weird noises near the end. The fridge too. We had a couple of corner cupboards you had to literally crawl into to get something from the back. Just a few surprises when I emptied them out. The counter top was cheap and ugly. As you can see in the picture below, it was literally falling apart at the seams. If you were wearing a knit top while walking past this and snagged the corner, said top was ruined. And you can't forget the cheap vinyl floor, yellowing in spots, holes and dents from where knives, pots, lids etc were dropped over the years.
I was going to share pictures of the insides of the cupboards, but they were looking really really bad. Again, something you don't really need to see.
We are about a 1 1/2 weeks into the renovation process. One bin has been filled and taken away, a second bin is slowly being filled up. We received a new electrical fuse box yesterday as the builder special one was not big enough for our house, kind of like the air conditioner they gave us. I will share pictures as the project progresses. Right now the subfloor is being laid for the new tile floor and its rather noisy above me.
Thank you for stopping by my little corner of the blogging world.
