Our Home Renovation: Before

Over the last few weeks we have transformed about half of our house. Also, by we, I mean mostly professionals.

We had new floors installed in our entry, kitchen, dining room, laundry room, and master bath. We have a whole new kitchen, cabinets, counters, removed the weird low ceiling, and new appliances. And finally all new tile in the master bathroom shower, plus a new counter and sink and fixtures.

But I can’t jump in to the construction process and finished product without starting with a look at our “before”.

Let’s start with the kitchen. we’re pretty sure the cabinets were original, so older than us, and had been painted at least once. And, why are the handles in the middle of the doors?

One side of the kitchen was missing some base cabinets and had a pots & pans hanger in place of a set of wall cabinets which meant less counter space, and dusty pots and pans. I am not a fan of having things out, I want everything to have a home somewhere with a door where it can stay nice and clean. There was a wooden cabinet unit from IKEA in this space when we moved in but it had all open shelving on the bottom so we repurposed that furniture as a work table and used an IKEA tabletop with legs in it’s place just to have some extra counter space. But we had to put a rug down to cover up the tile that wasn’t actually installed. It was just sitting there.

Here is a closer look at the ceiling and check out that oh so lovely wood look Formica countertop.

Next let’s take a look at the Master Bathroom.

So the shower wasn’t HORRIBLE, but it was ready for a little update. It also was to a point where you could clean it, but it never really looked clean.

We removed all of the hardware, becasue it was a little rusty from being is a tiny wet room for several years. We wanted to brighten up the bathroom with some lighter colors, but we have a really shallow vanity cabinet that was custom for this bathroom, so we kept the wooden cabinet to save some money, and because it was newer and nice.

We also replaced the flooring in the front of our house (foyer, hallway, pantry, coat closet, laundry room, kitchen, and dining room). We had replaced the foyer and hall flooring with laminate a few years ago, but decided to have it redone in the new tile so the front part of the house was all the same.

It was a lot of work and long overdue. It was also stressful and exciting. We are getting settled back in now, so check back for more about the process and the final result.