Kitchen: After!

When we bought our house in March '11, the kitchen looked like this:

(Click photos to see larger versions.)

 

Note the brown cabinets and paneling. Also, note the geese-ridden wallpaper below the floral wallpaper adjacent to the checked wallpaper! 

 

In the picture above you can also see that the range was an electric cook-top, and the gas oven was set into the wall to the left of the fridge. What you can't see is that the range hood was broken.

Breakfast nook

You can see the brown rubber "baseboards" in this picture.

The view from the breakfast nook back into the kitchen. 

Those cabinets above the range really blocked line of sight and light. The kitchen felt very small, dark, and cramped.

About two weeks after we moved in, I spent my Spring Break following the tutorial on YoungHouseLove for painting kitchen cabinets (so very helpful!) and put on all new hardware (hinges and door/drawer pulls), and we ended up with this (forgive the mess):

Definitely an improvement, but there were still several things I wanted to change!

Just to the left of the oven was the pantry:

That pantry, while better than nothing, was cramped. However, I wasn't sure what we should/could do to use our allotted space more efficiently. (In this picture you can see our walls after we hired a company to come in and remove the 3 - yes 3! - layers of wallpaper we had failed to budge, fix the damaged dry wall, and paint.)

After living with the kitchen in that state for about 6 months, inspiration struck. I told Gus that I wanted to rip out the cupboards above the range to make the kitchen feel more open; rip out the electric cook-top and replace it with a gas range/oven combo; rip the gas oven out of the wall to the left of the fridge and expand the pantry into that space; repaint; get real baseboards; and get new counters, a deeper sink, a better faucet, and a garbage disposal. Just a few tweaks, really. ;)

In November, we hired a local handyman we knew to do the renovations for us at a steal of a price. 

Here are the results: 

Granite Uba Tuba countertops with Travertine tile backsplash

New island range hood, gas range, deep sink, awesome faucet, and garbage disposal

Breakfast nook

View from the breakfast nook through the kitchen

No more cabinets over the range!

 

Pantry after:

There is 3x the storage space now!

So, there you have it - our new and greatly improved kitchen! What do you think?