The first time we toured our old house, the kitchen was such a mess. The make shift counters were falling apart, the drawers were hanging in different directions. The old farm sink had been a beauty in its day but had started to rust through in places where the enamel had chipped off. The whole thing was a big mess. Actually the whole house was a mess. Dark paneling on every wall plus dark curtains left hanging on windows just added to the cave-like quality. Depressing!
I remember that day clearly. We had a friend who was here from Hungary and brought him with us to see the house. He walked around with his camera snapping the whole time. He would look around, snap a picture, then look at me shaking his head and say, "Oh, Hope!" On to another room...snap a picture..shake his head, then, "Oh, Hope!" That's all he ever said during the tour. The lady who owned the house and had lived here was there with us, so I would whisper to him, "It's okay, I can make it nice, you'll see!" He was here just long enough to help us slap some paint over the dark paneling, rip down the dark curtains and move in, all within a couple of weeks. He was amazed at the change in such a short time.
I wish I could share some of the before pictures but I got a virus on my computer and lost them all. You can't really appreciate all that we've done here without that evidence. So just trust me when I tell you...it's come a long way, baby! We began by tearing out the counters and old sink. We were working with a budget of...ZERO, ZILCH, NADA!! DH was about to be sent to Atlanta for RR training and we had to rush just to get moved in before he had to leave. A friend of ours was having some remodeling done on his kitchen including new cabinets. So I called and asked him what he was doing with his old cabinets and he said they were in the yard ready to be hauled away! We told him to hang onto them and we'd be right there. So we got some lower cabinets and a stainless double sink for free! We kept the original upper cabinets which were painted with white, flat ceiling paint! We installed the new/old free ones which were wood color and with our trusty Lowe's credit card we got a new counter top. We lived with the two-toned cabinets for months then finally got around to deciding on a paint color. We added new brushed nickel hardware to help to match up the upper and lower cabinets.
It's hard to get a good overall picture but you get the idea. You can see the upper cabinets that reach all the way to the top of the 9 foot ceiling! I'm 5' 2" tall so all the shelves are useless to me except the first one, plus there are only 2 sets of cabinets. Most old houses had none so I guess I'm lucky to get that many!
The double windows over the sink are very high too as you can see. They do let in lots of light but I can't look out!! We do have a long window on the side though. We added a bead board backsplash and painted that. There was plastic over that part before to keep out the cold!!
Then there's the big white elephant, otherwise know as a refrigerator! We would like to figure a way to disguise it but since it's a necessity so we deal with it! There is a doorway coming into the room from the laundry/mudroom and another doorway on the other side of the white elephant going into the dining room.
You can see the corner of my stove in the third picture. It was just sitting there all by itself with no cabinets, range hood or anything. We recently bought one of the over-the-stove combination microwave and vent. We had a small upper cabinet left over that we weren't able to use so we put that over the microwave. We haven't finished that area yet so I'll show pictures later when we do. We also want to do different flooring later on.
We have lived in our old home over 3 years now and each room is still a work in progress. I'll try to do a room by room as we finish projects.
