Kitchen Construction

Ok, so I just realized how long it's been since my last update so I decided for something quick and fun. As you may have read from my previous "Diary of a House" series, my house is a fixer upper and STILL in repair after 4 years. Well the way my house is laid out is rectangular. Narrow and long which doesn't make it very easy to rearrange things. Well the kitchen is the last part of the house and we've started tearing it down a few weeks ago. I thought I'd give to some progress updates on it.

About a year ago when the downstairs construction started there was a bit of talk about what to do with the kitchen. At the time there was a pantry turned bathroom off to the side and small doorway that lead to the dining room. The kitchen felt quite cramped and there was not much counter space to work on things. The tile was a horrible yellow pattern with an slightly less horrible black and white checkered pattern under it, with a terrifying green tile under that, with great hardwood floors under that. Yeah... that's right 4 layers of flooring. There was about an inch difference between the kitchen and the dining room. Took a few weeks and some stubbed toes to figure that out.

So last year we started ripping down the walls in the front living room, den, and dining room and my parents were over discussing what to do with the kitchen. I kinda had some basic ideas about the look I wanted but my parents had other ideas. Since my dad was the one doing the construction and footing a portion of the bills, I didn't want to argue with them too much about it. They felt that keeping things similar to the way they were would be good. I had other ideas. I wanted to redesign it to give me some more counter space and while also giving it a more open feel. They pretended to be listening but I could tell they didn't want to go for it because it meant more time, money, and labor. Well I just gave up with a huff and went upstairs to cool off. I didn't want to explode on them and seem ungrateful for the work they put into my house so far.

This is my kitchen before. The door there leads to the back porch.

Kitchen from another angle. The doorway on the left leads to the dining room and the door on the right side leads to the half bath that the previous owners had added in.

When I went upstairs I saw my girlfriend on my laptop and she said, "Take a look at this!" She had gone downstairs a few days ago and measured the kitchen and went onto the Lowes website and used their kitchen designer to come up with an idea of the kitchen. I took one look and my dream had been realized. It was almost exactly as I had described it to my parents. I immediately grabbed the laptop and headed downstairs to show them. They looked at it and spun the picture around to get a good look at the whole design and said, "Ohhh that looks really nice."

"WTF? That's the layout I described to you 2 minutes ago!", I thought. But I bit my tongue. I'll let this one go if it means that I get an awesome kitchen with space to cook and eat.

So here it is. My dream kitchen.

Ahhh the new kitchen. Hardwood floors, The sink is right next to the dishwasher but for some reason the bowl and faucet don't show up. French Door fridge, more overhead cabinet space and a darker counter top.

The bathroom is removed and converted back to a pantry, the oven is moved from the east wall to the south, and we added a ton more cabinets and counters. The wall separating the kitchen is removed and the counter there will be converted to a breakfast bar. I couldn't find a design for it on the room designer but I know they make them.

If you want to try out the Lowes room designer for yourself give it a go HERE.

So what do you think? Any tips or comments are welcome. I will be updating this and posting real pics when the construction is complete.