Demolition

Day 2 of Demolition is over!  This is our very lovely kitchen before demolition.  I've never minded this kitchen.  It was tastefully out of date.  The wallpaper was charming and the light fixture was on the brink of being stylish again.  The layout was terrible.  Especially the location of the dishwasher.  My favorite part about this kitchen was that I knew we would redo it so there was never any stress about the messes we made in there.  I think I could have given this kitchen a quick makeover on a shoestring but what fun would that be?  This is our first full out remodel.  It's fun, exciting, and a little nerve wracking!  

There were hanging cabinets over the peninsula that we took down almost as soon as we moved in.  Then I took off all of the cabinet doors on the upper cabinets to see how I would like open shelving.  I loved it.  Everything was so easy to reach.  This was a great help when I had to decide if I would actually do open shelving in the new kitchen and we did!

 The light has always been great in this room, the whole house actually.  I think that's why I fell in love with this house to begin with.  I remember walking through the kitchen and being completely charmed with it.  I said, "I can live with this!"  This view is looking from the dining room swinging door.  While the dining room is flooded with light in the afternoons, the kitchen becomes a little dark.  We are centering this door (and sadly removing the swinging door, I've always loved those).  The door will be much bigger allowing for the afternoon sun to flood the kitchen.

 Those floors were a laminate.  I was fooled when we bought the house, thinking they were pickled oak, only until I saw the floor curling in the corners.  When they pulled it up there was linoleum underneath, it was really cute linoleum too!  We are putting in hardwood to match the rest of the house.   I love wood floors in a kitchen.

Our kitchen is now completely shelled.  We've created a makeshift kitchen in the dining room.  So far, it has been fine.  We've been lucky enough to have my parents in town.  With a pool in their backyard, long naps taken by the kiddos, and handed a hot meal to take home, this seems a little too easy.  :)

As a side note, it is Magnolia's last week of school (which has made me sadder than I would have ever imagined) and we are leaving for St. Louis immediately after her last day.  It's a bit chaotic but we are looking forward to a little break and some warm weather!

We are about to start our first major remodel!  It's so exciting and daunting at the same time.  We're doing the kitchen, the powder room, and the mudroom.  The cabinets will be here by the end of the month so the big demolition will take place soon before that!  I wish I could give credit to all of these photographs I'm posting but I can't remember the source since I tagged them almost a year ago.  (I think most of them are from House Beautiful.)  Our new kitchen certainly won't be like these but I like to look at them for inspiration.  Most of these I tagged because of the marble countertops which I've been heavily persuaded  by many to rethink.  I'm not sure I'm giving up completely because I really love the look.

We are thinking the countertops will be soapstone but maybe using marble on one section and as a backsplash to the range.  We're looking to make the kitchen really fit into our 1930s colonial so the cabinets will be white.  I had no idea what it was that I liked so much about these cabinets in the photographs until we met with a kitchen designer who told us they were inset cabinets and very expensive.  After much consideration, we gave up on inset cabinets and instead, beefed up our budget on appliances.

This kitchen is amazing as you can hardly tell that's the kitchen sink. 

And a mirror above the stove, the light fixtures and the island that's a circle... I really love how unconventional this is.

This kitchen is one of my favorites because of it's simplicity.  It's a small galley kitchen but so well done.

I tagged this kitchen because of the green floors.  It's not going to happen in our kitchen but I would love to do it!  I also loved the farmhouse sink but have recently changed my mind on that.  We're opting for a single basin undermount.  I wanted a stainless steel sink because I'm too hard on a sink and don't want to have to worry about chipping it.  The farmhouse sink looks beautiful here.

We are so lucky that my brother-in-law is our general contractor and doing this project for us much quicker than if we'd gone with anyone else.  I'll be posting updates as we go along.  It's going to be fun to watch the transformation.  Walls are coming down, doors and windows are getting moved, new floors, paint, wallpaper, and lighting... it's a big job, can't wait to get started!!!