Decorating Endeavors! Part I, the Kitchen.

Dan and I moved into our Hampden rowhouse about a year and a half ago.  It was entirely greyish-white, the kitchen was outdated, the basement was a mess, and the yard looked a bit droopy and sad.  We picked it for a few reasons: 1. it was a very good price 2. it is an end of row house, so it has windows on 3 sides instead of the normal 2 for rowhouses and 3. we wanted something we could work with to make our own.  Since we had pretty much a non-existent budget and I change my mind about 3 times a minute, it was a bit of a challenge.  Now, the house seems pretty much done!  Let's start with the kitchen, shall we?

Before

Hmmm nothing to write home about.  There is an old, nasty fridge and a broken stove.  The floor is covered in stick-on tiles.  There is no backsplash.  That weird light thing above the sink? Yeah that thing doesn't work.

What did we do? Well, first, we decided to paint it red...

In Progress

New stove! Moved the fridge! Bye bye stupid useless light!  It's an improvement, but it is still all cluttered and obnoxious.   Notice all the craziness??

Yeah only one of us can cook at a time and we have zero counter space.  Really.  Maybe a foot. Tops.  See the dish rack?  That is because we have no dishwasher.  It takes up the only space we actually have. Dude.

So... it took us a year and a LOOOTTTTT of switching, sweat, tears, mania, etc.  but we SUCCEEDED!!!! BEHOLD!!!!

After!!

First, we couldn't afford to replace a fridge just because it was ugly... soooo we painted it with chalkboard paint! It is a bit banged up right now but it is a VAST improvement to the ugly stained white thing.  

The ugly builder's grade wood cabinets are now white! Dan and I put up the tile ourselves and it was soooo much easier than I thought it would be.  Now I am eyeing the bathroom....  Notice a shiny stainless steel appliance that wasn't here before?? Yep, that would be a DISHWASHER there! I had NO idea the dishwasher would affect us as much as it did.  The kitchen is clean about 95% of the time.  The dishes stay clean, things don't linger in the sink, and we have reclaimed our countertops!  Of course, we lost the only big cabinet we had for storage so we had to get creative. First, we hung those lovely pots and pans above the stove- very very handy!

Second, we decided to put up pegboard a la Julia Child for the rest of our pots, pans, etc.  Edmond seems to appreciate the change!

We also decided to replace the ugly little light with a $40 "track lighting" fixture from Ikea.  Go Ikea!  Now we can actually see what we are doing!  So, after many many coats of paint, tiling, 2 new appliances, 1 new light fixture, and a lot of door handles, we have a somewhat new kitchen!!! Dan wants to replace the stick-on tile.  I can't figure out what to put there instead...  We will have to wait and see!  Overall, I think we had a very successful remodel! Yay!!!