Melissa (of home blog The Inspired Room) knew that her kitchen was "certainly not the worst kitchen ever," but she wanted it to feel like her kitchen, not like a generic builder's kitchen. So after three years of living with it as is, she took the plunge and made it her own, focusing on giving it a better layout and a lot more charm. See the 'After' photo below:

There was nothing quite so angsty in my kitchen renovation as the countertops. Maybe it's because I was coming from a rental kitchen with truly awful laminate countertops, countertops that were not only dirty cream in color but textured with deep wrinkles, like rhinoceros skin, never clean and never smooth; but I was convinced that the countertop choice would make the kitchen. Countertops are the difference between easy cleaning and dread. Countertop material changes the light in a kitchen, and is the surface under your hands and food. For me, kitchen renovation meant finally having countertops that were beautiful, bright white, and easy to clean. And not too expensive, my husband added. 

Marble was the natural choice. Right? Right! Here's the story of how we overcame our fears, and found our honed marble countertops. 

We loved the warm, woody feeling of this Pacific Northwest kitchen. Love the look? Want to emulate some of it in your own kitchen? Here are sources to help you get the look. Fill in the blanks in the comments!

Warm Traditional Kitchen Sources

Architects: Emerick Architects
Cabinets: Custom by Treeform Woodworking, Clear Vertical Grain Oregon Fir
Cabinet Hardware: Linnea
Countertops: Honed Caesarstone
Dishes: Vietri
Faucets: ______________
Flooring: Oregon White Oak
Lighting: CP Lighting
Paint – Walls & Ceiling: Coastal Point by Miller
Range: Wolf
Refrigerator: ______________
Sink: Sonoma Cast Stone
Stools: ______________
Tile: ______________
Windows/Doors: ______________

Last we checked in with my kitchen renovation, we were wrestling IKEA cabinets and installing them with (ahem) sex bolts. (See all the posts about my kitchen renovation so far here.) Now I'd like to take a step back and talk about a process that should be sexy but is actually fraught with confusion, uncertainty, and a lack of resources: Buying kitchen appliances.

Read on to see how we navigated the overwhelming process of buying appliances, and to see what we picked out. I'll talk about how buying a range top can actually save you money, as well as our one amazing Craigslist find!

The owners of this Scandinavian-inspired kitchen in Seattle did most of the work themselves, tearing out a whole wall to make the space open and light. Love the look? Want to emulate some of it in your own kitchen? Here are sources to help you get the look. Fill in the blanks in the comments! (And see another photo below.)

What's the incentive to undergo a kitchen renovation? For Kitchn reader Leigh, it was a desire to make the most of the view outside. "One of the major problems with the existing kitchen was that it only had one small window looking over an amazing view," Leigh told us in a recent email. "Our goal from the beginning was to open up the views by having as many windows as possible and no upper cabinets.  To do that, we needed to redesign the space to make room for a large pantry/mudroom..."

When Kitchn reader Sherri decided to give her 80's kitchen a facelift, she knew she wanted to keep her appliances (they were all under five years old) and the look of the warm oak wood. But a few key changes and the kitchen is now much improved! See the 'After' photos below:

When Ana and John decided to sell their 3-bedroom house, they knew they'd need to spruce up their tired, dated kitchen to attract potential buyers. The original 1927 kitchen was still intact for half of the space, but there were issues: modern sized plates didn't fit in the vintage cabinets over the sink, and the appliances and open shelving (which necessitated demolishing the original cabinets on one side of the space) made the kitchen look cluttered. Visitors, Ana said, always found the original farmhouse style sink charming, but it was much too shallow to be practical. And the linoleum floor? "An eyesore and hard to keep clean."

So with a return investment in mind, the couple worked with a kitchen designer to give their (partial) 1927 kitchen a fresh, new look and make it appealing to potential buyers. Read more about the renovation and see 'After' photos below: More

Installing our cabinets!

Ready for the next step in my kitchen renovation? Here's where things get a little wild and fast, and where my photo library gets a little, um, thinner than I would like. I understand now why people have a hard time documenting renovations, especially near the end — you're so exhausted and ready to be done the camera is the last thing on your mind.

Having said that, I do want to walk through how we installed our IKEA cabinets. Here's a peek at the process of assembling and installing the kitchen, which we actually did ourselves with some coaching from our contractor. (Tip: If you want to read from the beginning, click here, or scroll to the bottom of this post and click back through the series widget at the bottom.) More