megdanielle

For many families, the kitchen is the heart of the home. It’s the place that you spend the most time together and the place where a home’s love is tangible and taste-able  In our home, we make no exception. In fact, as self-proclaimed “foodies,” our love of this space is probably somewhat heightened from the norm. I mean, come on…culinary greatness happens in this space, people! (Not by my hand of course but you’d be blessed to share a meal that Freddy has cooked!)

Combine our love of food with the fact that we gutted our kitchen in mid-December and have only just had the counter tops installed and what you get is an utmost appreciation for this space. And it is a beautiful space!

When we bought the house, we had our plan laid out to refurbished the existing cabinets. A fresh coat of paint and some new handles would give it brand new appeal! That’s what we thought anyway. The counter tops looked okay and we figured it would be too much to tackle up front with all the rest of the must-complete projects on our list.

What we didn’t see in our two quick stops inside before committing to buy the house, is that the kitchen cabinets were cracked, damaged, full of don’t-touch-that tacky paper and other stains and messes. Ultimately, it looked as though we had just discovered the next big project on our hands.

Here are some “before” pictures. The first two are edited to make the space glow. It is charming, isn’t it? The last picture is not edited. It gives you a better idea of what we were really working with (although, as my mom will attest, it doesn’t do the kitchen justice). Let’s just say it wasn’t the most inviting place to house your dishes! I should have taken pictures of the insides but alas, I didn’t think about it until now.

We considered making the kitchen space work despite the intense amount of work it would take to bring the cabinets up to par but when it came time to cut up our new flooring around these existing cabinets that needed to go, we decided to bite the bullet; new cabinets were ordered.

As I mentioned earlier, we ended December sans kitchen but were fortunate enough to have a sink and some counter top space downstairs to get us through. We placed the order for cabinets just before Christmas and by the first week of January the cabinets were installed.

It happened quickly and right on schedule and we falsely believed we’d have our kitchen back in no time! Appliances were delivered as we waited on our counter tops and the days started ticking by…

Without giving you a dramatic story, the counter tops came in late but were FINALLY scheduled for Wednesday, February 13th, totaling nearly two months without a functioning kitchen. Freddy and I had a busy week that week but Freddy worked out his schedule to come home for the install.

On Tuesday, February 12th, Freddy and I had plans to celebrate Valentine’s day. He made a dinner reservation close to home and told me he had a good surprise. I came home Tuesday evening to the best Valentine’s Day surprise anyone could possibly receive: Freddy had gotten the install moved up one day and my counter tops were in place!

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. He had to pull me away from them so we could make our dinner date on time! Having the kitchen in place has rejuvenated Freddy on the house-front and he has been tackling project after project ever since. It’s incredible. I am certainly blessed to have such a handy man who has been able to save us a ton of money by doing it himself.

Women, find yourselves a handy man!

So there’s a look at the heart of our home. It’s still in need of a back splash, some paint, and a refurbished light fixture, but it’s otherwise perfect! We’ve also started on the dining room:

The wagon wheel is NOT a permanent fixture 😉