Kitchen Before & After: Julie’s Outdated Kitchen Gets a Modern Makeover
When Los Angeles writer Julie Wolfson purchased her house, the outdated kitchen came with a “hideously ugly” tile floor and a barely functioning oven. Julie and her husband Steven wanted to remodel the kitchen before moving in, but it ended up being too big a project to tackle at the time. Now, thirteen years later, they finally have the kitchen they dreamed about.
In Julie‘s words:
When we finally demoed the kitchen this summer and the contractor started to pull up the tiles, it was a tough job. There were at least three layers of linoleum floor under the tiles and thick glue that destroyed the original wood flooring below that. We ended up having to pull up every thing to the subfloor. Our contractor bought wood they thought would match the wood floors in the rest of the house. They installed it unfinished and stained it dark brown. We are planning to stain all of the wood floors in the house that color soon.We kept the layout of the kitchen and did not move any walls but demolished the walls to the stud in the kitchen. We also patched the walls and repainted in the breakfast room and added some cabinets in there as well as cabinets and shelving in the pantry/laundry room. The kitchen now has new cabinets, counters, tile, lighting, windows, and appliances.
Our favorite new element was also our splurge item: the Heath tile backsplash. We bought their Modern Basic in blue fog. We were picking from things that were in stock and fell in love with the color. We wanted to make sure to not choose anything for the remodel that was backordered. We also had the cabinet company create two glass front cabinets to display our vintage Heath dishware collection that is over 50 years old.
Resources
• Design: Steven and I designed it ourselves and worked with a contractor and Simply Kitchens to work out the plan for the cabinet layout
• Cabinets: Simply Kitchens
• Countertop: Caesarstone
• Range, Dishwasher: Thermador (Pacific Sales), Breville Smart Oven (Amazon)
• Sink: Allia fireclay sink (A.P.D.), Hansgrohe Allegro faucet (Costco)
• Tile: Heath Ceramics
• Accessories: Lucano ladder from A+R, towels from Poketo, Bauer Pottery bowls, and rabbit from Tortoise (our kitchen mascot)
(Images: Julie Wolfson)