Phase 1: Kitchen Demolition

Our kitchen was by far my least favorite space in our home when we bought the house.

It was nearly identical to the kitchens of my friends split level homes growing up and unchanged (minus the appliances) since 1974!

Down to the outdated brass hardware in the center of each cabinet door and the highly limiting "S" shape of the footprint.

 

We had no choice but to make it work for a bit while we could start re-saving our pennies for a total kitchen renovation. I am always trying to find hacks and ways to save money but this job would need to be a complete overhaul.

We made a few quick adjustments to better suit our families needs. This included pulling out the weird little built in kitchen desk unit. Also, I really needed a place to put my beloved green kitchen hutch #upcycle 😍

We also popped off that horrible overhead cabinet unit that hung over the peninsula. This really opened the space up nicely actually.

This room had a tiny little eat in kitchen that could barely fit a table with 4 chairs. We didn't even attempt to find one for it. It also awkwardly had a pantry closet in the corner so any table would really just be in the way.

We were really counting down the days to demo and start fresh in here.

Luckily, with family close I called in reinforcements to help save us some major "mula" and demo our entire kitchen. It was was a full family effort!

It was oddly cathartic to pull these drawers out and say farewell and bon voyage to those horrid handles.

Cabinets out! Well, that was quick.

There for sure was an entire family of mice living behind the dish washer living their best lives 🐁🐁🐁

Our contractor told us that we likely saved around $800 by doing the demo ourselves.

We decided to open up the entire kitchen + dining space into one large room. The dining room was a little on the small side and we were really looking for a nice open, continuous space.

Would have also loved to take down the wall between the living room and kitchen but come to find out it's load bearing and would NOT work within the budget we had to stick to.

Stay tuned for my next post on the full kitchen reveal!