Let’s take a look at some of the awesome new details in our kitchen project!!
We have a dish washer!! And I’m back to running it every night which makes me feel like my life is coming back together again! 🙂
This beautiful sink we bought at Lowes is gorgeous! I knew from the start that I wanted a farmhouse  (also known as apron front) style and I’m so glad I went with a giant one basin one!!
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This massive amazing garbage disposal is my husband’s pride and joy! haha
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Its a Waste King, and apparently it’s able to chop up anything you throw at it.. including bones!!??
My GE Stove top. I finally have a gas cook top!! And now I feel like I am actually really cooking 🙂 (no offense to anyone who likes electric.. it’s just not my cup of tea) And thanks to our new friend Kevin for giving up a Saturday to connect the gas line in our crazy hot attic 🙂
The day has finally arrived! I am soooo excited as we get ready for this huge day for the kitchen project!  For this day we asked for a few more friends to help! We ended up with 5 guys for the concrete. And I think that was the perfect amount. And Tiffani  and I were there for whatever we could help with!  We rented a mixer from Home Depot and got to work!
DIY Concrete Countertops
We already had our formula for the color figured out. So the guys just had to follow it for each batch. Â I will say we had a few issues with consistency in the batches of cement. All of the blogs and youtube videos will say you want the concrete to be pretty think and that is true. But there seems to be a happy medium where it also needs to not be to dry! Â All in all most of the batches came out pretty well and with my Father in law and Jonathan at the finishing trowels it came out beautiful!
And a very important step was vibrating the edges.. to make sure to get as many air bubbles out as we could. ( After the forms came off you can really tell where we took time to make sure we vibrated really well and where we may have rushed a little bit)
It took us about 6 hours or so I would say to get it all in and smoothed out. And then the waiting game for it to set a bit to be able to run the trowel through it again…
There are some pretty little touches getting done in DIY Kitchen remodel right now and they make a huge wonderful difference!
First, these lights were hung in place. This is the counter that will have my sink and dishwasher.. also, there will be a bar edge on the other side with stools for sitting up at the counter!
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I found these lights at Home Depot! And we added the specialty light bulbs for the antique look! I think they are exactly what I hoped for!
Also this trimming was added to the light box
Little things like trim make such a huge difference!
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The Fridge and pantry cupboards were moved into place and I was able to even move stuff in! So that really helps having more items in the kitchen instead of spread through-out the house!
Eventually, the plan is to get a nice big fridge and then above it between the two tall cabinets we’ll do a couple of open shelves!
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We are still plugging along. We are cooking with our new oven quite a bit despite the heat. And of course still over using our crock pot and bbq.
But we are doing fine and with amazing results like these how could we not be excited??
This is how the boys stayed busy while the guys were working! Rolling cars down the driveway!
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Also, our family has a little announcement!!!
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We are so very excited to be expecting our third little blessing! It’s amazing!!
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This was our announcement picture… I think it turned out pretty funny! 🙂
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I hope you are enjoying our DIY kitchen remodel updates! Are you dreaming/planning for a remodel??
This week has been a full one and very exciting for the kitchen project!!
It began with prep prep prep! 🙂  Covering the new floors with paper, patching up some more holes, etc.
sidenote: I’m leaving it like this as long as I can! protecting these floors during construction is no joke!
The walls were textured (thank you to my Father in Law for doing a great job!) on Tuesday afternoon.
The girls flew into action on Wednesday night for painting the ceiling and walls! Want to see?
Sherwin Williams Paint from Lowes. Salty Dog in High gloss
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I love the dark color and I think we get away with it because it’s only in a few spots and everything else will be a calm color/feel. Â It’s also high gloss. The benefits to this is it will be easily cleaned and it also gives a great shine to it! We also painted the drop ceiling a new white color.. I don’t remember which white.. there are far to many options for white!!
We took a break Friday night for a wonderful birthday date!! Ryan’s birthday was Saturday but since we knew we would need the whole day for the kitchen, we took off friday night to dinner and a movie! It was great to have a sitter for fun instead of work 😉 And it’s always fun spoiling and spending time with my husband! Man, I love that guy!! 🙂
And he makes 33 look smokin’
Saturday Morning (after more birthday presents!! ) We got to work. These guys put in something like 13 hours on this kitchen today! And it really shows… It starting to look amazing and this is the fun stuff, we actually get to see the transformation (instead of all the work hiding inside the walls or wherever)
We decided to wire the oven and get that in, in hopes of allowing me something to cook in! The cabinet for the oven/microwave was a bit to big for me, so the guys had to assemble that one. Â It’s beautiful, seriously!! And I’m super glad Ryan insisted on the Microwave we found at Ikea’s as-is department. It was just a display model, but they took 45% off of the price! Â The oven and microwave together just has such a sleek look! Â very fancy!
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It was a really fun surprise when I came home from picking the boys up to see the progress the guys made while I was gone!! check this out!!
This center cabinet will hold my cooktop. Between the wall cabinets will be where the hood is! and that whole wall will be the backsplash that I am soooo excited about!
I really like how much the molding at the top of the wall cabinets adds just a little finishing touch! There will be molding at the bottom edge of them too!
I Â felt like celebrating the progress so I ran out and bought an apple pie and some ice cream! So, we baked a pie in our brand new oven!! * A note on that.. our manual didn’t say anything about it, but if you get a new oven I suggest turning it on empty at first, there was a lot of smoke and burn off from the factory dust or whatever.. didn’t smell very good at first!
Then we decided to install my little desk area and this little cabinet even has the countertop!!! Â Jonathan used this little area to test out the cement counter! The only thing it needs is some finishing touches and a seal on it. I absolutely love it! And we even put in an outlet and usb outlet into the countertop! (Can you tell I get really annoyed with my phone dying?? haha and I always have to look for a spot to charge.. well, not any more!!)
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I think we were all feeling pretty good about how the hard work is turning out!
And before calling it a day we got one of the pendant lights up! Â It’s gorgeous!
These Home Depot lights look like the ones I fell in love with at pottery barn! but instead of costing over $100 a piece they were $30.00.
30 bucks that’s it!! 🙂
We bought the old-fashioned styled light bulbs at Battery plus and I think it adds a great little touch to them!
I think it’s turning out beautifully! I’m excited to be able to bake some dinners now and give our crockpot and bbq a little bit of a break! And the plan is to work on the sink soon so that’s super exciting!!
And the boys have loved playing with the cardboard…we sure have plenty! 🙂
Well, what do you all think of it all so far? Â Are you able to see the vision? It feels like it is actually working, we may even get a kitchen out of all this! hahaha Yes!!
Turns out it is pretty hard to keep up with a blog while in the midst of a giant remodel… Actually it’s sort of hard keeping up with everything while the house is a bit torn up. But, I’m not complaining!!
Things are moving right along. Â We are motivated to get this kitchen done! And it seems like we are nearly done with all the behind the walls and in the attic stuff that takes so much work (Can we ever thank you enough Jonathan?) but doesn’t show much… now we get to see the changes a little more!! Look at this pretty outlet
This is over where our coffee station shelves will be. the slider will control the pendant lights, then lots of plugs for my coffee gadgets and the last one there is all USB… I even bought a pack of lightning cords for all of us Iphone users… no dead phones in this kitchen! 🙂
So let’s see, this weekend:
Floors were glued down around the edges
The gas line has been put in the wall for the cooktop
The old hood pieces have been removed and the hole patched up since we will have to move the new one over a bit.
wiring for the pendant lights and outlets
more sanding the walls and prepping for texture/paint
There were a lot of things that just needed to be figured out, regarding install. Like the hood and deciding if I just bought the wrong one or not. And the wiring for the oven when it’s time for that… etc.  (Ryan and Jonathan have used google, youtube, and our installation manuals more than ever before I think…. How cool that we can seriously figure out anything?? thanks internet! 🙂 )
I’m sure there was more but it’s really hard to keep track these days!
We had a few delays, just realizing in our motivation to get finished we forgot things need drying time and we needed to schedule when others could come to help with things like the gas line and texturing, etc. But we really are moving right a long!
I have struggled with frustration over not being able to be a part of the work as much as I would like, with the boys needing attention and just needing to be out-of-the-way. Though I’m sure there hasn’t been much I could have done up to this point, I love doing stuff like this and I’m looking forward to the days coming that will be filled with stuff I can learn to do!!
This week we look forward to  texture for the walls and then us girls get to paint!! And so if everything goes well with this week, the weekend could find us installing cabinets and turning this empty space into a kitchen!! 🙂
My goal for the next couple days will be to get the rest of this house in some kind of order… seriously, we need to have clean clothes even during all of this stuff??? haha I’ll catch up on laundry I suppose and maybe even try to dust, sweep, vacuum… I sort of gave in to the mess that has extended everywhere but it’s time to get some of it under control. Â I also plan on some play dates with the boys and getting them out of this house. They have been doing really well during this project but I will try to just focus on fun for them in between work in the next couple of days.
What a blessing our friends have been to our family through all of this project. It’s amazing and I’m already loving what has been done!!
Friday was crazy awesome— DIY Kitchen demo day!!!!!
We removed the appliances, turned off electricity and cut off the water from under the sink, etc. ( I didn’t, so I actually have no idea how to do that stuff :)…… just being real)
But what I did do was hit those cupboards and tile with hammers!!!! It was really really fun!
Here’s a little slow-mo action of the guys destroying the counter!!!!
Notes: (If you are looking at a project like this, these are just observations)
Prepare for a mess… I know, I know, I was prepared for a mess.. but it was a pretty big one 🙂  And it has extended far beyond the kitchen area… there are boxes piled in our spare room and our Master bedroom.. but even the living room, pictures had to be removed from the wall that shares the kitchen, because our attic entrance is in the closet we currently use as a pantry, that’s sort of a mess too! 🙂 But all worth it, I’m sure.
We didn’t think about things like dust pans for picking up all the scraps. So, a big dustpan would have been nice, We did use a big tub to throw all the random little pieces into and then tossed into the back of the truck. a wheelbarrow would have worked great for that as well. Â (the men are taking it all to the dump this morning.) The Shop-Vac we purchased was wonderful. Once we picked up all the bigger pieces, the vacuum took care of the rest very easily! The boys even had fun helping with that job!
Also, I would suggest plenty of protective equipment. glasses, gloves, wear the right shoes (in our first videos we do not have proper shoes on for this kind of work.. but I went and changed shortly after)
We had a lot of fun once we brought the boys home from Papa and Grandma’s house (what would we do without Grandparents???) Daddy asked William to take his cup from the car and put it in the sink… haha. William’s huge smile was awesome when he opened the door and realized there was no sink. Check out the video.
So, we accomplished a lot in the first day! removed all of the old kitchen, removed the side wall. Began opening the doorway, removing the pocket door and moving the outlets and light switches. We also pulled up all the carpet in the dining room!! YAY!
There were quite a few “little” things that had to be addressed. We ended up putting extra support up in the attack just to be sure everything that needs to be supported is. Deciding how far to cut back the doorway, how large of a column we will need to keep for the other side, a pipe needs to be relocated so that we don’t have to have a giant column.
We are so thankful for our friend Jonathan, who knows more than we do about all this stuff and the stuff he doesn’t know? He’s willing to figure out with us, so, that’s awesome!
Next up.. dump run, finishing the door way, box out the column, wall repair, prep for flooring…. and it’s only day 2!
Here’s a video of day number 1!
Day #2 has gone well so far! The guys are continuing to work while I work on getting two very excited, tired boys to bed!
Today the guys got all the trash to the dump. Â We finished up the new wider doorway into the dining room, set up the column, took off all baseboards, Finished up the outlets and switches, patched up some drywall. Â We cut out the rest of the carpet that needed to be removed. I’m sure a few other things….. We’ve just finished smoothing out the holes in the drywall so we’ll have a smooth surface to lay the tile, wallpaper and a couple of places we’ll even be painting.
Day 2 Â making sure our guys are eating, and then doing dishes in the bathtub! haha
Day 3 ( a little lighter day today so we all can have some church/family time)
But the guys still got a lot accomplished today…. Boxed in the column, and door frame finished patching up walls, and more floor prep… oh and another run to Lowes 🙂
Months and months of preparation and planning have all come down to this weekend!
This ol’ kitchen is on it’s way out!
Here’s a little summary of what we have been doing so far.
(We have never done this before and have had little to no professional help in this sooooo we might have done it all wrong as far as order of events etc… but eh, we are here!)
The beginning of the year Ryan started asking a lot of questions about the kitchen and how much money I thought we would need if we were to redo the kitchen. He had been looking at our savings/finances and watching me struggle to get drawers to just open 🙂
So I began to pile some estimates. He helped me search for appliances, I knew I wanted white cabinets and figured IKEA to be the best bargain. Â I had so much fun compiling all my design ideas (you know those ones that you save on pinterest or Houzz.. for that some day when you get to design parts of your house?)
So to begin we talked to our friends Jonathan and Tiffani about helping out with the project, We are blessed with such great friends!
We decided to buy up all the appliances we wanted to replace first. We wanted the convenience of time to allow for finding the best deals. The majority of them being purchased at sears outlet. See my previous post here about appliances.
There are lots of little things to decide about, especially since we are removing a part of 2 walls. one to open into the other room and the other to widen the doorway into the dining room.  We also decided to widen the entire kitchen by moving the counter with the sink into the family room by about 10 inches!
So for awhile we have just been buying buying and buying all the little (and big!) components of the kitchen. The Ikea cabinets and some organization things! Â Read about our IKEA purchasing experience here.
I picked out some awesome elements like a wallpaper for a section of one wall and an amazing sink, faucet, pendant lighting, tile for the backsplash.. etc. Â I planned to make a full shopping list eventually so stay tuned!
For now I’ll just leave a few before pictures here……. and I’ll return with a Demo update soon. Just a couple more hours before the sledge hammers fly!!! 🙂
This is looking in from the play room/family room. All of these upper cabinets will go in order to open everything up.
these drawers have been a challenge for awhile now!
I am so very excited about remodeling our Kitchen!
Our house hasn’t had many improvements since it was built. We’ve only been here a few years and well, you know priorities have to come first… so we still have the paint on the walls that the bank chose before we bought it… and our dining room still has carpet under the table. (who does that??) But little by little we are working to personalize things.
Our Kitchen is desperately in need of attention. Drawers have been falling apart, the bottoms just coming away from the whole door any time you open them. My wonderful husband knows I’ve been trying to manage, but it has become frustrating.
I would like to say here that we have never ever attempted a project like this before…. I don’t know if you could look to us for much how to’s but I will share how we are going about this and hopefully give some helpful tips along the way!!
For us the plan to remodel all started with Ryan asking me if I could get a ruff estimate together of how much it would cost to do what I wanted to the kitchen.
First thing we did was renewed our membership for Consumer Reports. You can sign up for a year or monthly membership. Which gives you access to their reviews on the website.
Here’s a little something from their site about what they do: Formed as an independent, nonprofit organization in 1936, Consumer Reports serves consumers through unbiased product testing and ratings, research, journalism, public education, and advocacy. We stand firmly behind the principle that consumer products and services must be safe, effective, reliable, and fairly priced. We insist that manufacturers, retailers, government agencies, and others be clear and honest. We advocate for truth and transparency wherever information is hidden or unclear. We push companies to quickly address and remedy issues with their products and services.
They Rate and review so many things. So, when we are about to make a purchase, we like to look up what Consumer Reports says about them and of course they have a handy App to take with you to the store.
For this project the first thing we wanted to decide about was our appliances. This way we know the dimensions of each for the cupboards and location of everything. So we looked up what Consumer Reports said about dishwashers, Cook tops, Ovens, and fridges. But it doesn’t stop there. They even rate flooring, sinks, counter top materials..
up next shopping for appliances and get great deals……
Eventually, the plan is to get a nice big fridge and then above it between the two tall cabinets we’ll do a couple of open shelves!
  
  
  
          
