Kitchen Renovation

When Trucker and I married in 2006 I moved into his home. His home had also been his and his ex wife's home. Naturally I wanted to make it "our" home. The first thing I changed out was the kitchen. The kitchen is a galley style kitchen as most older homes are. Our home was built in the 30's and the kitchen is really small. By being so small it is also dark and gloomy as well. Or at least it used to be. Even though there is a double window over the sink and our back door is half windows it was still dark because of the paint that was there.

As you can see in the before pictures it was painted a dark blue on the cabinets. Each corner of the cabinets had a flower design which had been glued on it. The walls were half blue and half white. The upper half above the chair rail is the blue and the bottom is white (fake) ceramic tile. The white tile had been hand painted with picket fences, flowers, butterflies and more. It just wasn't my style at all. Plus it was the ex's. LOL.

This project took me over a week to complete. Trucker and I could not afford new cabinets so I painted them white and then painted all of the hardware black. This made a huge difference in the light of the room. On the walls I painted the same white except for the chair rail and all the trim, along with the doors and they were painted a rust/burgundy color. I bought new curtain valances on sale that are deep burgundy and gold stripped. My theme is country birdhouses and I found a wall paper border of just that. So this I placed above the chair rail all around the kitchen. I already had several bird houses which I displayed in various places around. I then made a trip to my favorite store on earth "Hobby Lobby" and lucked out that all of their bird houses were one half off. So I purchased several more of them. I have them displayed on open shelving, above the cabinets and on many other surfaces.

Since these pictures were taken we have purchased new appliances, but as of yet have not changed out the horrible linoleum flooring. We will be getting to that this summer.

We were both pleased with the way it turned out and what a difference in the brightness of our kitchen once more. I can now see when I cook.

Before:
After:




I apologize for the size of the pictures. At one time or another I must have re sized them on photobucket.

Today I am linking with:

Somewhat Simple - Strut Your Stuff Thursday
Tales from Bloggeritaville - Thrifty Thursday
Life as Lori - Get Your Craft On Thursday
The Shabby Chic Cottage - Transformation Thursday
Remodelaholics Anonymous

I want to thank all of the gracious hosts for each one of you hosting such wonderful memes. To all my readers: please take time to go and visit each one of them and see all the great links everyone has left. It's worth the time to see.

It was brought to my attention last night that I have reached my 100th follower. So in honor of this big event for myself I will be having a giveaway at some point in the near future. So do come back and visit again to see what I am giving away and how to enter.