Final Kitchen Reveal

I am so excited to finally share with you my kitchen!

As many of you who read my blog know that we wanted to change and update our kitchen within our budget.  This meant not replacing all the cabinets with great quality cabinetry, not getting the best counter tops, not redoing the floors, not even touching the lighting in the ceiling that our kitchen desperately needs, and not buying the latest and greatest appliances. However hubby did spoil me in that area!

This post is going to be a lot of pics.  I hope you will enjoy the before and afters.

Before:

Our burgundy kitchen...

I always loved this color, but I was ready for a change.  One thing I noticed was that dirt still showed up on the dark paint too!  I decided that I wanted to age my kitchen with dark wax--I hope to hide a lot of those fingerprints and dirt.

It all started with changing our island from this to...

This

Next I started painting the walls and wood work.  For the wood work I used Annie Sloan's Coco and light and dark wax.  The walls are painted a sandstone color that we used in other rooms of our home, so I already had the paint.

This wall before:

After:

I made this mantle out of pallets. 

It is my coffee station.

I use some old jars for sugar and cinnamon.

The next corner of the kitchen

Before:

After:

Now for the cabinet area.

We have a galley kitchen, so all the cabinets are on one wall.

We only replaced the bottom cabinets, counter top, and sink.  The sink was a huge deal for me to change.  Our old sink was 6.5 in. deep.  Our new one is 8.5 in. deep.  It is amazing what 2 in. will do for space and cleaning!  The old sink was 33 in. wide, and our new one is 25 in. wide.  Oh how I love having more counter space!

Before:

After:

We added lighting underneath the cabinets, and boy does that make a difference!

I especially love having 3 drawers and a skinny cabinet now for cookie sheets.  My favorite drawer is that skinny junk drawer :)  That skinny cabinet was custom made for our little 8 in. extra space that needed to be filled.

The other custom thing that had to be done was cutting the top cabinet for the microwave.  As you can see in the photo below, the cabinet needed about 3 in. taken off.  We also cut and finished the cabinet doors on those cabinets to match the other doors.

You can't even tell we cut them.

There was an extra outlet added to the wall under the cabinets.

Oh how I love that too!  We have an older home, and it lacks in outlets and lighting.

It's amazing how much you appreciate those small things when you never had them.Two burners on our old stove never worked.  I had to manually light them.  How nice to have a stove that works!  We went from a 16.5 cubit fridge to a 24 cubit size.  I can't believe our family of 6 lived with such a small fridge before.  I am loving all the space!

Break down:

1 can of ASCP Old white-$36

1 can of ASCP Coco-$36

1 can of Fiddes & Sons lear wax-$14

1 can of Fiddes & Sons Jacobean wax-$14

bottom cabinets-$316

counter top-$108

Hardware-$27

Sink-$105

Faucet-$98

lighting under the cabinet-$138

Total -$892

Plus appliances and paying our friend-$3,350

Grand total-$4,242

The average cost of a kitchen remodel is $19,588 and I don't know if appliances are added into that average cost.  

So a remodel can be done with a small budget!

I hope you enjoyed our little journey.

Linking up With:

Finding a Balance

Balancing things in Life can be a challenge.

I find it very hard sometimes to have a balance of certain things in my life.

Some days I think, Ah I did it.  I put all things in the right order and did everything that needed to be done.  Then I wake up the next morning and I can't seem to get started on the right thing, and I start a snowball effect of bad decisions for the rest of the day.

I know I am not alone.  

Some days it is just hard.

I am so thankful for a great hubby who urges me in the right direction and encourages me not to be so hard on myself.  Recently our Pastor has done a series on Finding a Balance in the Christian Life.  I have greatly enjoyed it, and I get encouraged by God's Word to lead me in the right direction and to have that proper balance.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Matthew 6:33

DIY Greenhouse Out of Old Windows

At the end of last summer, my neighbor was replacing all of their six-pane windows.   As a good neighbor, I thought I would help take their trash off of their hands.  So embarrassing my kiddos, I walked across the street and asked them what they were going to do with them.  They were just going to throw them out, and they told me to take as many as I wanted.  I think I took nine.  I sold two without glass at my craft sale, and I had these five left over with the glass still in them.

Last fall I saw a greenhouse made out of windows, and I knew that I wanted to make one for my garden.

I used these "L" brackets to attach the side walls together on the top and bottom. 

  

I used my old cabinet hinges to secure the side wall to the roof, and I had bought a set of the rectangle hinges  to form the roof.

Here it is!

I had plenty of hands to help me: my mom and two of my boys.  I know there would have been shattered glass if I did it myself.  Our little greenhouse was tested the night we built it.  Our first thunderstorm brought strong winds and rain.

 But she is still standing with no broken glass.

I think I am the kind of person that has more fun decorating my garden rather than growing something :)  My son is so excited to grow more veggies, and I am more excited to plant "perty" flowers.

Kitchen Update #6

It has been a little over a month since we did anything to the kitchen.

So far I repainted the cabinets and redid the island.  I had to wait on the next step of putting in new cabinets. Our goal was to try and give our kitchen a face-lift without breaking the budget.  So the cabinets that we were replacing were really out of necessity.  We just bought the unfinished cabinets from Lowe's.  

The old sink base cabinet was so gross!!  It had years of mildew and I don't know what in it.  The cabinet next to it was of little use as far as storage.  That top "drawer" is actually just a face--no drawer because the owners before had put in a 33" sink in a 30" sink base cabinet.  They had cut into that drawer area in the side cabinet.

We also just went with a laminate counter top they carried in the store.  The sales guy recommended putting a couple of coats of Polyurethane on the underside of the counter top to guard it from moisture, so that is what I did..

So the day finally came to rip everything out.  Our friend was doing the work, and he allowed my boys to help.  I am always so thankful for an opportunity for my boys to be boys and work alongside some good godly men on work projects.  

The cabinet above the stove had to be modified for the microwave, so the oldest got to help cut that out.

I got to help redo the face on the cabinet door.  Since the decorative line got cut off I had to cut a new decorative line and sand away the old line along the bottom sides of each door.

I used his Dremel to cut the new line.  I loved using that tool. This clamp 'n tool guide made it so much easier to cut a straight line too.

The doors still need more sanding before I paint them and wax them again.

I will be able to share with you the finished kitchen very soon!

Yippee!

Is This Spring?

Wow!  It went from winter to summer in one week here in Pa!  I would so much rather enjoy the spring weather instead of it feeling like summer already.  I was able to finally organize a little on the front porch.  It is very much lacking in the flower area.  I hope to get to that soon.  I was playing around in the dirt today for a little bit, but my gardens are still looking very pitiful.

My kitchen is getting some attention again.  It has been on hold for a couple of months now, but our friend came and did some work and hopes to finish it up by Saturday!  I will still have to do some painting and some final touches.  I can't wait till it is all done.  Right now I am doing dishes in my bathtub--I guess I am not the first :)

Using Wax and Stain

I am no expert in this area; I am only sharing my experience on using wax and stain.

I took this tin star that I had and wanted to paint it white.

Annie Sloans Chalk Paint is perfect to use to paint metal.

Once school is over, I want to try and make my own chalk paint.

With chalk paint you need to use wax to seal it.

I use the clear wax first, and then I like to use dark wax to age my pieces.

I wanted to share with you the oops I made the very first time I used wax.
When I opened the dark wax for the first time it looked like this.
Runny.

I didn't think anything of it because I always used stain to age my other paint pieces.  I thought it wouldn't be a problem.  Boy was I wrong!  This is what happened to my end table when I tried to use the wax in this "runny" state.  It literally made a stain on the paint, and it did NOT go away with rubbing it with a cloth.

So what is the solution?
Refrigerate your wax until it gels up like the picture below.

Now on with the project.
Why do I like using the dark wax?
As you can see in the picture below,
the dark wax just seems to bring out the character in a piece.
The left side has clear wax on it, and the right side has the dark wax.

You need to always buff the wax as a final step.
When you can rub a cloth over the wax and it is no longer tacky,
then you know it is time to buff.
The buffing is what gives the wax a nice sheen.

I found that the warm temperatures are the worst to use wax.
 When it is the right temperature you don't need to wait long at all to buff.

I still love to use stain when painting wood.
I really like how stain soaks into the wood.
I am sold on both.
What about you?  What do you like to use?