The husband and I were lucky enough to buy our first home last year and, in the time since, have been rotating through rooms, updating out biggest pet-peeves in the house. The biggest targets thus far have been the kitchen and the basement. Since Thanksgiving is definitely a Kitchen-centric holiday, I figured I would let you all know what we have been up to there!
The kitchen was always a great sized galley-style kitchen with a TON of cabinets and new-ish appliances. Buying a home with a gas stove was very high on our list of priorities, but to say that lime green walls, gray trim, and yellow cabinets with yellow walls was not our style would be an… understatement.
Before Pictures
Out with the Green!
Apparently, we lasted all of 3 weeks in the house before we decided to paint the kitchen. We went with Storm Cloud by Sherwin Williams and repainted the trim and doors white. Overall, I really do love this color and I think it created some great contrast with the cabinets.
And then the Yellow!
It took us nearly another year to get back to the kitchen to make any other changes. First, we just changed the light fixture. Switching out the single, stainless steel pendant for a brown pendant light with 3 lights.
Then in October, my dad came to visit and helped the husband pull up the old floors and install some crown molding. The most hilarious part of this process? The old floors under the floating vinyl floors was basically the exact same shade of yellow… (The blue is the pad below the “wood” floor)
In with the Gray!
Originally, we were going to wait to do the floors until my in-laws came the week before Thanksgiving to help. However, both the husband and I could no longer stand the ugly, slippery floor we had been stuck with. So, when the husband told me that he really wanted to just start on laying the new tile in the kitchen. I replied with a “ok, let’s do it.” And then proceeded to spend the next 3 weekends covered head to toe in mortar, dust, and grout… just in time for Thanksgiving.
The Current Status
I am not sure this kitchen will ever be something we declare “finished” while we live in this house, as there are still some big ticket items we would like to change. Namely – I would like the cabinets to be white, and he would like to change out the counter tops. However, I think we have reached a massive improvement over what we started with, and I cannot wait to see the next project. (aka our laundry room)
Are you more of the DIY or hire an expert type? Do you binge HGTV in hopes of getting to implement a few ideas while balancing a horse budget? Or would you rather I shut up about the house stuff and stick to ponies?
Also – who else HATES this new WP editor? It does not flow between the desktop and mobile version, so makes about a dozen more steps to adding pictures for me.
That looks amazing now! We have very similarly sized and colored tiles in our kitchen and we love it, it hides the dog hair so well, haha. Although I have to say, after living with white cabinets in my kitchen for three years I’m not sure I’d do it again. They are a PAIN. IN. THE. BUTT. to keep clean and nick-free, and ours were professionally done, high end custom cabinets designed to be white from the get-go. We have a turmeric stain on then, multiple wine stains, and the ones above the stove are slightly yellowed from cooking grease. They do look beautiful from far away, but I wish someone had warned me about how high-maintenance they are (especially when you cook as much as my husband does) so I’m just passing my experience along to you!
YES ABOUT THE DOG HAIR. With a black and white dog, these new tiles have restored my sanity hahaha. The yellow “wood” showed every hair. Even when clean, it looked dirty.
That’s such a good point about the white cabinets… We have to do SOMETHING with the cabinets because they need to be refinished, but maybe I will look into most stain-friendly options. We cook Every Single Night, so it has to be functional.
This looks great! Just had to reply back that I also didn’t love my light cream colors cabinets – but we recently painted our cabinets again and did the bottom half (the ones that really stressed me out) in a blue color. I love them! Just a thought 🙂
Love the idea! A dark grey might look awesome!
Wow. So much improvement! I love the tile.
Thank you! Definitely glad we went with a big tile instead of laying a million more smaller tiles hahaha
I love that flooring!! I have so many ideas for our house which had a lot of work done to it right before we bought it, but EVERYTHING is tan. So far all I’ve accomplished is the bathroom (which I would still like to redo the floors in) and our tiny mud room. My problem is I love instant gratification so if a project takes longer than a day I’m over it. Fortunately (??) our laundry room ceiling needs replaced so I think we’re going to try to tackle that whole area in one fell swoop in the spring.
I will say, it was hard to stay in love with the floors over several weeks of redoing them hahaha. but now? SO worth it all.
My laundry room is (was?) completely dysfunctional, so excited to have that redone too. You should do yours. You’ll thank yourself later. 😉
Love the upgrades!
We want to Reno, but our house is only 4 years old and the main floor is all one room….it doesn’t leave much to reno. Other then paint, and to finish the basement but I don’t think we will be doing that since we don’t love the house or neighbourhood anymore and want to get the heck outta there !
oh gosh! our house was built in the early 90s, and we were definitely looking for a house that needed cosmetic upgrades when we were shopping. Hopefully you are able to get the heck out of dodge fast!
The husband didn’t want anything that needed work….couple of years ago he decided he had changed his mind. Men, I tell ya….lol !
hahahaha They will always blame us for wanting to make updates, but they are really the instigators. 😉
They really are!
I LOVE the tile! You’re inspiring me that my husband and I could remove the orange and tan tile from our kitchen and relay tile. We’re pretty handy. We’re a bit behind you on our kitchen projects – we have painted and are working on new light fixtures. We hope to have the cabinets refinished white (or maybe light gray now that CobJockey made that point about the white…) and add some additional tall pantry cabinets as well. We don’t have a lot of cabinet space, so they’ll be AMAZING once we put them in. I’m obsessed with your floor and I might copy it. 😉
Thank you! And you should TOTALLY do it. It’s pretty much life changing. Hahah we got our tile at Lowes:
Style Selections Cornell Ivory Travertine Slip Resistance Floor and Wall Tile
Love it. Looks sooo good. I’m dying to just tear out the kitchen and go to town but, ya know, even DIY costs money! So I will be patient.
Tell me about it. There’s a reason I haven’t had lessons in FOREVER lol
Oh that looks great! Love the improvement! I’m sort of on the fence about DIY. I like it, but my biggest hang up is where to start. Like, I’d love to replace floors or whatnot, but where or how do I initially pull up the old floors without ruining anything else? haha. I know there are videos for that sort of thing, and I’ve never needed to do floors, but when it comes to things like that I’d certainly like to learn how to do them. Other things tho I think are best left to a pro, although pros these days….. We’d almost be better off doing it ourselves lololol
Hahaha I have the husband for the “where to start” part of this… He ripped up the carpet in my basement “just to see what was under it” (concrete), and then he did the same to the floor in our kitchen hahaha. At that point, you might as well just plow forward.
LOVE that wall color and the tile is gorgeous. I’ve done hardwood refurbishing and laid laminate wood, but real tile makes me nervous. I really dislike the new editor. The “blocks” are way less convenient than the old style of typing and adding as you go and it looks funky on my phone.
Thank you! I keep trying to think of other places to use that wall color and tile haha. I am just so happy with how it came out.
I used to write all my content and then add pictures and I just… cant anymore. It’s really similar to some WP.org editors I have used on “real” websites, but building a static page is way different than a blog post. Annoying for sure.
having trouble commenting, just wanted to say looks awesome!
Thank you!
great job!! it looks amazing. We need to get our dark counters updated. Ugh.
I have not used the new editor but I dread it from your and Sara B comments.
Countertops are just so much money hahahaha. Not sure if we will ever get there.
Wow! Nice work, it looks great. Also I am avoiding the new editor like the plague
I don’t blame you. I am not sure what was the point of making it less user friendly, but there you go.
YES to house posts! All the house posts! Love the color in the kitchen, and the tile. I agree with the comment above about white cabinets. They’re REALLY hard to keep clean. I don’t love my dark-stained cabinets but they do hide a multitude of sins. (Not so much the cream formica countertops…)
Thank you! I might have to reconsider the white hahaha.
I like your paint color! We need to paint every room in the house, but I have yet to finish a single one so it seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. We’re normally very DIY, but I’m just not getting enough time together for a massive project.
I’m sure that the farm is taking up a lot of your DIY time!