2013 Kitchen Remodel

That was the longest four months of my life. Living in the same house you are trying to remodel, with four kids, working full time, running a company and doing all the work yourself. Sound like fun to you?

Honestly, it was really fun for the most part but it was just so many projects, one after another that it just catches up to you and just seems to go on forever.  And the dust. It's everywhere and gets in everything. But in the end, it all cleans up and there's a beautiful new house underneath all that.

Interested in our journey?

We've lived in our home for over three years now. We rented it for those three years from some owners that had moved out of state and weren't quite ready to sell yet. We love the area and the layout of the home is perfect for our family. The past year or so we started looking at other homes and just couldn't find something we loved in a decent price range. We kept comparing it back to our current house and we knew that with some updates, this house really could continue working well for us for a few more years.

So we made an offer and closed on the house in June. The benefit of having lived here for so long is that we knew exactly what we wanted to do and we wasted no time in getting started. The biggest problem area was the main entry level which includes the kitchen, living and dining area. It was outdated to say the least.

Just a few short weeks after closing on the house, we tore out absolutely everything on the first level. Everything. This was the start of four months without a kitchen. Not fun at all.

We started by rebuilding a portion of the wall to separate the living area from the kitchen and the rest we left open. The design was done by my Mom and it was so inspired! We went through so many different ideas and when she first gave us this design I said there was no way that it would work. Now I can't imagine it any other way. It makes our kitchen so functional while keeping it large and open. Everything flows so well together and the workspace is perfect. I have 83 square feet of counter space and can have multiple projects going at once and still have room left over.

The kids have their eat in bar for breakfast and lunch and we still have a great seating area for dinner that's open to the kitchen and lets in so much more light than before! The wood floors are done on a 45 degree angle which draws you across the living room into the dining room and having the same floor throughout makes everything feel united.

We added two gas lines, one for the new fireplace and one for the new gas range.

We also had a finished fourth level basement that had two bedrooms and a large play room but absolutely no windows, so it was pretty much a cave. We dug out and added three large windows and this was probably the biggest transformation of all. It also caused us the most problems too. They filled completely with water in a rain storm the day after we dug them, luckily before we had cut the holes in the house but ended up having to re-dig them and go deeper to get into our drain tile. Having natural light down there makes such a big difference and adds so much livable space to the house. We even moved the kids rooms down there and now we have the upstairs all to ourselves!

Sitting down and looking at it now, there's really not much I would change. We love the space and doing all the work makes you appreciate it that much more! Thanks to all the friends and family that helped! I'll be sharing some more about our appliances this weekend so keep an eye out for those too!

For even more photos of the journey, check out this Album.