Hello everyone, I could not be more excited to be writing my first post about the Spring One Room Challenge! For those of you who are not familiar, twice a year Better Homes and Gardens runs the "One Room Challenge" which gives participants 8 weeks to make over a room in there house.
I signed up for the Spring challenge hoping to makeover our kitchen during that time. We have been doing a lot of the background work on the kitchen for the last couple months since moving in. However we haven't gotten started, so I thought this was the exact push we needed. The kitchen is one of the most important spaces to us in a home, we spend a ton of time in there preparing meals and it is a busy space for our family.
To start this challenge, we need to go over where the kitchen is now and our plans to update it. In this video below I walk you through the whole kitchen and go over our plans. Take a quick watch to see where we are starting. I will also go through it here.
We bought this house in November and it was very much a 90s builder grade fixer upper. We did some work to other parts of the house before moving in but had not yet touched the kitchen. The kitchen itself is very 90s builder grade with orange oak cabinets, laminate countertops, white appliances, a fan, florescent light and floor tile backsplash. However the footprint and space is all there for us. It actually is very functional for our family, especially in comparison to our last home.
Since the space is very functional but not aesthetically pleasing we are going to do a kitchen makeover but we will not be gutting the space. Here are our plans, possibly in the order we plan to complete them.
Paint Walls- Done before we moved in with the rest of the house
Replace flooring- Done before we moved in with rest of the house
Remove florescent light & fan, install can lights
Remove desk area and replace with a regular lower cabinet
Replace countertops
Take bar top to counter height
Replace sink
Remove & Replace backsplash
Add center prep island
Swap for new cabinet doors
Replace Appliances
Remove above stove microwave, replace with vent hood
Add cabinet hardware
Phew I think that's it, seems like a crazy lot when I see it in list form. However some of these will be done together and some a quick pieces once the others are done.
To get to this point we have done several things and laid out the design vision for the space. Here is my original design inspo before we moved into the house. A couple pieces have been updated that I go over in the video but the design vibe and vision remain pretty much the same. Once we knew the design we were going for we went to pick out our countertops, tested paint samples of potential cabinet colors and got the materials for the kitchen island.
Next on our list is having a team help us with the electrical for the lights and build a new cabinet for the desk area. Then we will be ready to have countertops installed. As part of that process they will take our bar top to counter height and replace the sink. So a lot will be done there all at once. They will also remove the current backsplash, or it will be done before the countertop install.
During all this we will also be building our kitchen island for the center of the space and I will need to order the new cabinet doors as soon as possible since they will take awhile to come in, but those will go on toward the end once many of the other pieces are complete.
After that we will need to pick and install a backsplash/ hardware and shop for new appliances. I am so thrilled to take you along this journey and I hope by the end of this challenge we will have a new beautiful and even more functional kitchen space for our family.
Our kitchen is the space in our house that has seen the biggest change since we moved in and we love the transformation. We made most of the changes ourselves over time, I will run down each step below. Here is what our kitchen looked like when we bought the house (listing picture)
Our Kitchen Today
Updates we made:
First we painted the cabinets, video on the process here
We recently completed a home project that we have wanted to do for the last couple years, we added stacked cabinets in our kitchen and extended our trim all the way to the ceiling. I did film a video of the process that will give you a look at the whole process but I thought it would be helpful to write out all the steps here as well.
The back story on our kitchen: When we purchased our home 2.5 years ago our kitchen looked like this: brown wood cabinets, white appliances and no backsplash
Pretty quickly after moving in we painted the cabinets white, I also filmed a video on how we did that here. That left the space looking like this:
Over time we also installed a backsplash, changed out the hardware, light and eventually got new appliances, leaving the space looking like this:
Our "last" project was filling in the large space above our cabinets, we actually have very high ceilings in our kitchen but only had 24" cabinets. This left an additional 24" between the cabinets and the ceiling. The gameplan was to add a layer of stacked cabinets, these cabinets were 12" tall, leaving 12" left between the ceiling and cabinets. This is the area we decided to fill in with trim. Here is a look at the process
Step 1- Buy, Paint and Install Stacked Cabinets:
I purchased these stock cabinets from Lowes for all cabinets except one that was an odd size. I actually purchased them one at a time as budget allowed and painted them with the same paint as the rest of our kitchen cabinets. Once they were all painted it was time to install them.
To Install:
We took off the original crown molding at the top of the cabinets, then found the studs that our existing cabinets were installed in and simply drilled them into the same studs. ** However once we got all the cabinets up there we realized our wall was actually uneven so we had to put wood shims behind certain cabinets to make them all line up. I have heard an uneven wall is very common so just keep this in mind*
Step 2- Build Box
Most people would likely be able to skip this step but all of our cabinets were the correct size to buy stock cabinets, except one in the corner. So we decided to just build a box in that space that we could use to display decor and cookbooks. This was probably a far from professional job but we built the box with MDF. We built the box in place since again the wall was uneven and we could tell building it elsewhere and trying to install it wouldn't match up. I used wood glue to put the box together and then used nails to secure and drilled into the studs.
Step 3- Wood fill seams
After getting all the stacked cabinets up I used wood putty to fill in the seams between the lower and upper cabinet rows to make it look more seamless. Let it partially dry and then sand to smooth. Eventually I painted over these seams as well.
Step 4- Build Frame for Extended Trim
We decided that we wanted to build a small frame from the cabinets to the ceiling to make installing our trim much easier and more secure. We simply used scrap pieces of wood and drilled them to the ceiling then ran 2x4's vertically attaching to the pieces on the ceiling. Then this would be what we attached the MDF sheet to directly
Step 5- Prep MDF- Attach to frame
We purchased a sheet of .5" MDF and cut it to size to fit the space between our cabinets and ceiling. Once we had cut it we used liquid nails on the frame to get it attached. Once it was up there we added some nails to secure it to the frame.
Step 6- Prep and Attach new Molding
Once your MDF sheet is up it is time for the trim, now what you do here all comes down to preference. I wanted a big chunky piece of crown molding at the top, so I bought the biggest piece I could find at Lowes. Then we also added an additional piece of trim to the lower section of the MDF. I love how it turned, the molding and trim brought the whole look together and made it look like a custom kitchen.
Step 7- Sand, Putty & Paint
After everything has been built and attached it is time to give any rough areas a sand, fill in any holes, nails or seams then paint. I ended up needing to do two full coats of paint and one coat of touch up.
Here is the current look of the kitchen, we absolutely love how it turned out. It completely transformed our kitchen for a low cost and a minimal time commitment. We worked on this one evening and one morning so less then one full day of work minus some of the painting I did later.
The last thing we would love to do is buy new cabinet doors for some of the top cabinets with the rounded molding at the top to match the rest, here is a little look at what it would look like
While going through all my SD memory cards the other day I found a full video tour I took of our Dallas House. I took this footage right as we put our home on the market to move. My intent was to do a series on moving and the process however that was one of the most stressful and packed times in our lives so it just didn't happen. When I found the footage I figured it would still be fun to share. This was our first home and we truly didn't know what we were getting ourselves into when we bought it but it is full of sweet memories and will forever be our first home and for that I am beyond thankful.
So I complied the video tour of our house, which will below for you to watch. In addition I also pulled all of the photos that we used to list our home since they show the entire home. Please note since these are real estate photos they do have an interesting filter on them I would not have choose myself but they still do show a good representation of the home.
Our home was built in the 1950's and you will definitely see a lot of that original charm throughout. That also means there are some quirky things you are not used to seeing in newer homes. All of the houses in our neighborhood were built at this time and had our neighborhood was our favorite part of owning this home. The whole neighborhood was full of huge, beautiful trees and was super green. We absolutely loved long walks through the neighborhood.
On to the inside of our home, starting when you walked in the front door, you came right into the living room, which was also connected to the dining room. View the past tour and post I did of that space here, where I go through the sources for everything in the two rooms. Here is the overall view of the space. As you can see it is one long, narrow space anchored by a huge picture window. The entire home other than the kitchen and bathroom had beautiful original hard wood floors that were in great shape.
Here is the view from the opposite side, you can see the front door in the corner. The best way for us to set up this space was to find an L shaped couch that fit that space that could go up against the window on one side. This allowed us to position the TV on the main open wall. We eventually surrounded the TV with a gallery wall and loved how it pulled it all together.
Within this space was our dining room, with a small door into the kitchen. The door to the kitchen actually featured a pocket door, as it was common to close off the kitchen completely during the time our home was built. See a before and after of the dining space from when we moved in here.
Here is the view of the kitchen from that door. It was actually a very large space but the space just really wasn't maximized like it could of been. If we hadn't moved this is the part of the house where we would have made some changes. As you can see we actually had the original 1950's style flat panel cabinets they had just been painted white and topped with granite by the previous owner. (Note we actually changed the hardware before putting the house on the market, after these pictures were taken and kicked ourselves for not doing that the day we moved in since it made a big difference and was such an easy and inexpensive change)
And here is the opposite view. What you don't see in these pictures but you can see in the video is right next to the fridge was our washer and dryer. Which the previous owner built into the kitchen as a "bar area" with granite top. This was something else we wanted to improve if we had stayed in the home.
We also had a dining nook in the kitchen that was sandwiched in between two sets of glass sliding doors. One lead to the courtyard and the other to the backyard. The third door is to our garage.
Here you can see a peek of where the washer and dryer are next to the fridge.
Moving out one of those doors here is a look at our courtyard patio. You can see the full makeover of that space here. There you can see that we had to replace the broken down fence and we planted grass and filled with new furniture. This was our favorite outdoor space, we spent much more time here than in our backyard. Our pup Benny also loved this space for hanging out.
Also off the kitchen was one of two doors into my office. One of the unique/quirky parts of the house layout was this room which was considered a "pass through room" we are not sure what it was originally used for when the house was built. The layout worked perfectly for an office. However if we had ended up using it as a bedroom we would have closed off the door in the kitchen.
It was actually a very large room, technically a little bigger than our master so there was lots of space. In this photo I have some but not all of my Burn Boutique inventory out to make it the most visually appealing for buyers.
Right outside my office in the hallway was our guest bathroom. You can also see a post on the before and after of this space here.
At the end of the hall was our guest bedroom.
Then at the other end was our master bedroom and bathroom.
And finally a couple pictures of the backyard, it was in need of a little bit of an overhaul out there but still a very nice space with a large deck.
I hope you enjoyed taking a trip down memory lane with me and taking a tour of our very first home. It was full of so many sweet sweet memories and I do get a little emotional thinking about it. We love you first home under the trees!
