Kitchen Renovations Before & After

A huge part of being a mom is making your house a home–a sanctuary and place of respite. Whether it’s a rented home or one with a mortgage or one you paid cash for… Whether it’s big or small, old or new, it really doesn’t matter. The thing that will matter to your children in the end is that it was a home, that it was as safe and secure and comfortable as you could make it.

I’ve been married for 22 years, and I freely admit that I’m still learning this homemaking thing. But I’m trying.

We bought our current home in December 2014. Wow… 2 years ago! It was a foreclosure in need of LOTS of TLC!

You definitely don’t have to spend a ton of money to make a house a home. More than anything, I’ve learned homemaking is an atmosphere and it’s created (mainly) by us moms. How we make people, especially OUR people, feel in our house is what makes it a home.

But the layout of this house wasn’t feeling homey to me at all. It mostly just felt outdated and dirty.

Here’s what our kitchen looked like BEFORE.

Those gold and porcelain cabinet doors made me sad. So, yep! We changed those too!

Ugh! I had forgotten about that dated shelf. And I guess that was a curtain rod hanging over the back door? I don’t remember that at all. And see that nasty spot on the ceiling? It didn’t take us long to figure out that was caused by the upstairs bathtub overflow not working properly. Thank God the Mr. is a plumber!

Twenty year old wallpaper, 20 year old countertops, 20 year old blue carpet in the dining room… The kitchen was a decent size, but was really closed in, so guess what we did…

We tore the place up! It was lots of fun and saved us tons of money!

We did the demolition ourselves, and since the Mr. is a plumber and knows lots of construction people, they helped us out–sometimes with advice and instruction and sometimes we paid them to do the work for us. You know, those things like putting a beam in a load-bearing wall–not a job for amateurs!

And now, our kitchen looks like this…

Yeah, that ceiling still needs to be repainted. And did you notice the patch of peach wallpaper we somehow missed when we were painting?!

Yes, that corner next to the fridge needs some attention.

Yes, there are lots of little things that still need to be done. And yes, I can spot every single imperfection in these photos–especially the kitchen cabinets which I painted based on the sales clerk’s instructions. Either I don’t follow instructions well or that sales clerk didn’t give them well. But no matter, I focus on the good stuff–like the fact that I have cabinets.

That and the fact that this kitchen is exactly what it should be in our home. It is the hub of activity. It’s where everyone congregates multiple times a day whether it’s meal time or not. It’s where stories are told and songs are sung.

By the way, my countertops are never that clear. At least five people (and sometimes as many as 12) eat three meals and at least one snack a day from that kitchen. My wonderful Hubby cleared the countertops so I could take some half-way decent ‘after’ pictures.

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