Kitchen Changes

Welcome to our kitchen! It's come along way in the 3 years we've lived here. 

Here are the pictures we saw of this room in the online listing.

To be honest I was rather confused by these pictures. Why aren't there base cabinets under the corner of that counter? Why is the wood so orange? What going on with the L-shaped panelling the between those cabinets?

{The answers we have found in our 3 years of as home owners. Still have no idea, but it is a semi-convenient place for our garbage and recycling.  Strange lighting in picture but they are over varnished and a little tangy for my taste. It's hiding the back of the stove and the strange pantry thing.} 

Our first change was to paint the walls grey rather than light blue. We used a light grey (Valspar's Tempered Grey) on most of the walls, with an accent wall by the back door in a darker grey (Valspar's Mountain Smoke).

It turns out that strange panelling was covering the back of a stand alone pantry unit (that didn't match the other cabinets). While we trying to figure out how to paint around it we moved it out and realized that taking it out opened up that area of the kitchen. So we got rid of it (well we are using it for storage in the garage). We borrowed an upper cabinet from the laundry room and my husband made a custom butcher block to match up with the countertop (I have a great husband).

So since we took out the the cabinets from the laundry room (which is technically in the kitchen as well) we built open shelving there for storage. I painted the whole thing including the bi-fold doors grey and added two ikea gruntal drying racks to the side walls .

 So you might notice that our washer and dryer don't match. We started out with matching ones that we bought used ($260 for the pair - a much better value than new rather than $800-$1800, especially when they have been refurbished). But our washer broke, so we bought a non-matching new-to us washer for $150 and am happy as a clam. I've seen pins where people paint their appliances, but since for the most part the doors are closed I haven't seen it as a pressing issue yet.

And then most recently we removed the cabinets above the peninsula and added some open shelving and  track lighting, for more details see here and here.

I have another big change planned, for a hint click here.