Kitchen Renovation Update

Finally, I have a Kitchen Renovation Update for you! In May 2016, Kieran and I bought an adorable 1938 Tudor Style House. The kitchen hadn’t been updated since 1938 and was in need of major TLC. It was gross. For the last year and a half, we have been working hard to renovate our kitchen. Here’s what we’ve accomplished so far!

Check out our photo over on Kitchen Cabinet Kings.

I can not believe it’s been a year and a half since we tore down the wall between the kitchen and dining room. I also can not believe I finally have a Kitchen Renovation Update for you! Kieran and I have been busting our butts to improve our adorable home. I’m kind of in shock we’ve accomplished as much as we have, even though we still have a long way to go.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane so I can show you where we started. Here are some pictures of our kitchen before we tore it apart.

The kitchen was fully functional but nasty AF. If you look at these photos and think, wow, they look so yellow, you should have fixed that in Lightroom. I did you guys, I did. The walls took on a yellowish hue after being neglected for 70 years. I couldn’t wait to give this space a fresh coat of paint.

But before we could paint, we had to demo the kitchen. To say the kitchen cabinets were decrepit would be giving them too much credit. They hadn’t aged well so repurposing them wasn’t an option. We wanted to open up the space between the kitchen and dining room so our only recourse was to tear everything down. Let’s just say I have an appreciation for Chip Gain’s enthusiasm for Demo Day. Demo Day is crazy fun!

See how nasty that old flooring is? I was afraid to walk on that shit barefoot! Who knew what type of old-timey diseases were lurking around? I wasn’t about to take that chance. Kieran and I lived with a giant gash on the floor for over a year. Slowly but surely we repaired the drywall and repainted the kitchen and dining room. Little by little, we transformed our house into our home. We enlisted our friend Danyel to help design our kitchen because quite frankly, neither Kieran or I knew how to marry the kitchen and dining room together. She designed a space that was unique and super cool. To read more information on Danyel’s design, click here. Kieran and I couldn’t wait to execute her vision.

Finally, in October 2017 of this year, Kieran and I saved up the money to fix our floors. We wanted to retile our kitchen and refinish all of the hardwood on the main level. Once we signed the contract to retile the kitchen and refinish the hardwood floors, chaos ensued.

First, we had to move everything out of the kitchen in order for the crew to retile the floor. Kieran and I were still able to access the rest of the house, however, I had to cook dinner on a hot plate and do dishes in our utility sink. After the tile was finished we had to wait an additional 2 weeks before another crew was able to refinish the hardwood. During that time I had access to my stove but still had to do dishes in the utility sink.

Kieran and I had to remove all of the furniture from our dining room, living room, and office before the work on the hardwood could be begin. We crammed it wherever we could find room, our bedroom, the bathroom, the garage, ect. We also had to relocate our pets and ourselves upstairs during the process. None of us were allowed to access the main level of the house once the work got started. It was stressful, to say the least. We had to pack enough clothes and anything else we needed for the week and cram it into our upstairs Airbnb space.

Here are some photos of the construction process:

It took 7 weeks until I had a working kitchen sink again. During those 7 weeks, I washed the dishes in our nasty utility sink. I was over the freaking moon when Kieran finished installing our new kitchen sink. It still has a farmhouse feel but it’s half the size of the original sink. We almost kept the original sink but ultimately decided it was too big for the space. The sink we have now is adorable and allows me to have twice the counter space I had before. SCORE!

We are not finished with the kitchen yet, so this post serves more as an update than a final reveal, but I wanted to show you our progress thus far! Without further ado, here is what our kitchen looks like today:

I absolutely love the look of our new kitchen tile. It literally cuts into the dining room hardwood which marries the kitchen and dining rooms together. I love the fact our tile floor is one of a kind in Portland. We had several companies come over and give us a quote. None of them had ever worked on a project like ours before. The company we hired did a tremendous job because our new floors fucking rock.

Kieran and I still have to button up some projects around the kitchen before it’s complete, but it’s off to a good start. We have some fun DIY projects on the docket to add shelving, a shallow pantry, and hopefully to build our kitchen island. I’ll update you on those projects as we complete them.

Speaking of DIY, Kieran and I just finished a fun project in our dining room. We have french doors in our dining room that lead out to the backyard. We use those doors whenever we take Homie outside or bring her home from a walk. Now that it’s the rainy winter season we can’t go outside without piling on layers, and when we come back inside, we had nowhere to put our wet clothing! We also lacked storage for Homie’s leash, outdoor toys, and treats. Her dog stuff was thrown into a box and her wet dog towels were stored in an ugly plastic bin.

We have a tiny coat closest in the front of the house, but we got lazy and hung our wet jackets on the backs of the dining room chairs. The dining room constantly looked sloppy and in varies stages of disarray. It was driving me utterly bonkers! I desperately wanted to create a space where we could hang our wet jackets, hats, and gloves, and gave us storage for dog stuff.

Kieran and I designed then executed the cutest little mudroom that fit all our needs:

Kieran is doing a write up on how he made the shelving, so I’ll share those details once I have them. I love our little mudroom area. It’s perfect for that space. Simply perfect, I adore it.

Danyel’s kitchen and dining room design didn’t include a mudroom (because she didn’t know we wanted one) so we’ll have to reevaluate the dining room design, but I’m confident we can make it work.

Man, what a long ass post. I feel like I just gave birth after writing this! Renovating a house is exhausting and rewarding work. I get overwhelmed when I look around the house and count the long list of projects we want to tackle. Like, really overwhelmed. On the flip side, I can’t describe the feeling of accomplishment that washes over us once each project gets finished. It’s downright amazing! We are far from finished working on this house but it’s nice to see our style finally reflected in our home.

Alright, that’s a wrap on our Kitchen Renovation Update. I hope you enjoyed seeing our progress. In the meantime, I’m back in the kitchen testing out delicious recipes to share with you!

Thanks for stopping by,
Christina