Kitchen Bitchin'

Oops, I really did intend to keep up with this blog better. I am trying, though. Paired with my sporadic posting, the story of my long and lazy kitchen renovation reveals a lot about me, I guess.

Well, two years after we started our cheap and cheerful kitchen renovation, we're almost done. You would think we were remodeling the Biltmore's galleys and dining hall, not just slapping some Ikea up in a 9X11 room. Oh well, that's sort of par for the course in our DIY history, and having a toddler running around isn't doing much to speed up our progress.

The new kitchen is pretty cute, but to really appreciate it, you have to look at what we started with, and then you have to remind yourself (or I have to remind myself) that we did all of this work ourselves.

We bought our house, which was built in 1942, in 2003. The kitchen was updated sometime in the early 60s and then left untouched for the next forty years. On moving day, we wer greeted with glittery laminate countertops, tragic and stained linoleum, and cabinets painted in a color scheme that I call "dirt and dust."


We did not want to take on any debt to renovate our kitchen, so we made do for a while with some cheerful paint, and later, a poorly rigged up dishwasher that lived in a hole my husband hacked in our cabinetry. Charming!


In January of 2007, we decided to take the plunge and begin our renovation. Using the Ikea home planner program, I figured out what would work best in our oddly-configured space, and we ventured down to the Atlanta Ikea on MLK weekend to place our big order. Two weeks later, I found out I was pregnant. We had a lot of work to do, and we didn't get it all done as quickly as we wanted, but it's done, it's paid for, it's ours, and it's cheerful and functional. I think it's pretty adorable, myself, especially considering we have a completely new kitchen for under $5,000.

As a preview, here is a Polyvore mood board of our renovation:

Stay tuned! Pin It