What challenge have you overcome in your kitchen? Our kitchen has been one big challenge. When we moved in it definitely wasn't our style — we also didn't have a big budget for a renovation. Over the past couple of years, we've gradually updated everything. With the help of our family we were able to do it all ourselves (our brother-in-law installed the marble backsplash, my sister helped put in the flooring, and my mom found the new sink for $5 at a garage sale). (continued)
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What challenge have you overcome in your kitchen? (continued)
Going the DIY route and searching for bargains really helped keep the cost low. Many of the accessories are from eBay, yard sales, and Ikea. The coffee maker and drawer pulls were purchased at over 50% off at stores that were going out of business. Instead of buying new cabinets, we painted and reconfigured the ones we had and built open shelving on one side of the kitchen. My favorite thing could be the butcher block countertops from Ikea, that have been oiled with Dark Tung Oil for a deeper color.
Although this has been an ongoing project for us for quite awhile, last month my husband and I completed the shelves, and now we're finally ready to just sit back and really enjoy our kitchen!
What's the story of your kitchen?
Our kitchen went from dark and claustrophobic to light and open. Now it's the perfect fit for our family. It's casual, not too big or fancy, and shows off our hard work.
What is your favorite meal to cook here?
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Wow, what a total transformation! Great work!
Congratulations! You've done a wonderful job. :)
Love the pops of turquoise!
The whole thing looks lovely. It would be wonderful to cook there.
My husband and I are at work on our kitchen, too, and trying to decide whether we want to go with floating shelves or ones supported with brackets. What method did you use for installing your shelves? (And are they a full 12" deep? They look like it!)
the kitchen looks great! I love the countertops and how you darkened them up w/ the tung oil. The subway tiles and the cabinets & pulls look great too! The open shelving breaks up the white nicely.
Love this kitchen! I really adore the look of open shelving, but how do you keep your things clean? If you cook a lot or you do not use everything regularly, it seems things would get greasy or dusty. Thoughts?
Alicia, its not so bad. We have open shelving too - I just dust my kitchen when I'm doing the rest of the house. The hood takes most of the yuck outside, so the items on display don't get very dirty.
Thanks for the nice comments!
JennyB, yep, they're 12". We mostly adapted this tutorial for our shelves. The inner frames are built with 1x2s with the back (the piece that is connected to the wall) being a 2x2. The top shelf is screwed into six studs (with 4" cabinet screws) so it's very sturdy. The frames were built to our needed length and 11 1/2" depth. We had plywood cut down to 11 1/2" at Lowe's and attached that to the top and bottom of the frames. Our final step was adding a nicer 1/2"x2" trim piece to the fronts to finish it off (bringing the depth to 12").
CarolynApplebee, these Ikea counters are really great aren't they? The Waterlox sounds like a good alternative to tung oil. Oiling my counters was a week long process, and I ended up doing 6 coats of oil before the wood wouldn't absorb any more. I do a light coat of oil about every 4 weeks, and I definitely feel like they're very water resistant at this point.
The flooring I used was Trafficmaster Allure in Teak (it is one of the stocked colors at our Home Depot and less expensive than online). It was the best choice for us. On top of our 5 year old we have two chihuahuas and three cats, so not having to worry about spills or scratches is really nice. So far I'm really happy with how it's holding up.
Alicia, Cashew is right. Cleaning the shelves hasn't been a big deal. Since our shelves are on the opposite side of the kitchen as the stove grease hasn't been a problem for us at all. All the plates and bowls we use daily are on the bottom shelves and they get washed often. I run a duster around and on the items on the top shelf when they need it.
Really well done. It looks great!
Great to see a fellow Las Vegan on here! I love your new kitchen, great job!