We've been working really hard on updating our small, outdated kitchen for the past few months now. My partner's stepfather is a contractor and helped us so much - along with my partner's mom and both my parents.
You can see the before in our before house tour for reference. This was the worst room in the house - it was poorly built in many ways. The previous owner had closed off a large room off the back of the house and built a bathroom in front of its door, INTO the kitchen space. So our first task was tearing out all the cabinets, fixtures, appliances, plumbing, electricity, and walls.
Thanks, mom, for removing the toilet :P Unconditional love, right?
The next part was the hardest - ripping up 100 years of flooring. There were 5-6 layers of linoleum and two layers of plywood over the subfloor. It took one long day of hard scraping and pulling to get it all up, then another day to pull up all the nails, tacks, and staples to make it relatively even. Then we installed the tile subfloor, which is a concrete board screwed into the wooden subfloor.
It was at this point that we learned that we would need all-new electric running through the house and a new circuit box - not a small sum of money.
Before his parents left for the week, we also spent a day installing our large sink so that we would have a place to do some dishes until they came back a couple of weeks later. This period is called our "slow cooker" period because all of our cooking was done in four separate crockpots, and a toaster. We were quite anxious for them to come back so we could caramelize some onions again.
A few days before they came back, we found out that my partner was being laid off - great timing, right? We luckily had a line of credit already established to finish this project, so if worst came to worst and we lost our house in the next few months, we could at least sell it with a finished kitchen. We had to put off putting in new electric until he gets another job, so we put in a basic stove line and left a lot of spaces open for when we can get someone in to finish it.
So we started our weekend with his parents by buying our floor tile, peeling off hundreds of very sticky tile SKU stickers, skim coating, tiling, and grouting. His stepdad did most of this as it was really a one-man job, so most of our time was spent drinking slow-cooker hot cocoa and sorting through mail. So fun! :P
After they left again, we finished sanding the newly-patched walls and we painted the whole room. We left a lot of trim off so that the electrician can easily do their work when we have the money to get it done.
We FINALLY got to set things back up the day before Thanksgiving, AKA the day we were leaving to go to his dad's house for the holiday weekend. It took us all day to take everything out of the shelves, break them down, put them back up, and try to fill them the best we could.
There's not nearly enough space for everything yet, but we're building some shelves in the corner to act as a pantry soon. Other things we'll be adding in are a dishwasher, all new lighting, floating shelves and rods above countertops, a rolling island with storage, and eventually a full pantry in the ~mystery~ room off the back of the house. (Ultimately, it wasn't a mystery - it was just an old bathroom. But it is still really creepy.)
