Kitchen - Befores

Well it's high time we started to take a look at the other half of the main floor renos we've been undergoing - the kitchen!  Just a reminder that these kitchen posts are so not in real time!  We started these renovations just about a year ago now so please don't think we're some kind of reno freaks, finishing an entire kitchen in the week it will take me to walk you through it!

So for today we'll take a look at how the kitchen was the first time we ever walked through it. 

Drawers missing, vent covers on countertops, doors falling off hinges, drawers with bottoms that would fall out...

The next time we went around, they had done a little painting to brighten things up and they had done their best to fix a few things

Just those few fixes alone made things seem less daunting...but we knew that this poor room was still screaming for an update.  Inside the lower cupboards the lath and plaster had been removed to get to some plumbing, but had not been patched up.  Soon after we moved in we realize this was a rodent highway!

Here's a view from another angle.  (The first views you saw above were looking from the back of the house towards the front).  Now here's a view from what you would have seen coming in through the front door, looking towards the back of the house.

That little puzzle of entryways and bulkheads had been built in when the house was converted to a duplex, they house the plumbing and wiring up to the second floor kitchen overhead.



The flooring actually photographs quite nicely in these pictures.  It's a very cheap laminate flooring that was not installed properly - the entrance to the front hallway and off to the living room had at least a 1-2 inch drop in floor height and no transition (which led to many a stumped toe!).  It also meant that if ever you ran into the kitchen excitedly, the floor would slide beneath your feet - which was of particular concern when passing the stairs down to the basement!

That yummy green colour had even been worn off from years of use. 

Despite all this, when we moved into our house, I loved that kitchen, if for no other reason than that it was ours.  It was cozy, quaint, and ours.  I'm not much of a cook yet, so the ancient stove and mini bar fridge we lived out of for a good while didn't bother me too much.  I loved this kitchen.  But I'm pretty sure I'm going to love our new kitchen even more.  Because not only is it ours, but because from top to bottom, side to side, every last square inch has been put together by our very own hands.  And for that we are extremely proud.

Tomorrow we'll take a look at demo!!

Have you undergone a kitchen renovation?  Or do you have future plans to?  How did you cook, clean and store food while under construction??