Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Kitchen Built In

This project has been one that we always wanted to do, 
but it kept getting pushed back when other important renovations got in the way. 
We completed this project in only.... 1.5 years!! 
Haha. 
There were many big projects that we worked on that kept us from continuing on this project (including totally re-roofing and re-doing our bathroom/bathtub & surround - I will post that remodel soon, we still have a few things to finish in there too, heh) and with wedding season in the middle of the project the weddings and photo editing took up most weekends.

Here is a picture of the way this nook in our kitchen used to look:
(everything is different from the wall color, to the fridge itself, haha, more on that later)


(the cardboard was under the fridge to slide it around since we had just moved the fridge all over to replace the floors)
This nook always felt so blah to me and I felt like it was so much wasted space.
I considered building an eat in table nook in this spot and moving the fridge to a different spot in our mudroom area but it just made the space feel closed off and dark, so we decided not to do that.

The first step was to build and paint the "bones" for the structure (being John's and my first real project like this there was a lot of trial and error):




Next John added a built in on the right side of the structure for our garbage can and one on the left side for recycling and some pantry space.



( the boys had to try it out and make sure it was sturdy enough for the garbage can ;) )

Then we added trim to the front to help "bulk it up" and make it look less wimpy/thin and I painted it (see where the fridge is in this picture is where I'd considered putting it, but it was just not a good placement for the fridge in these rooms)


By the time we got to this point we moved the fridge back in and I painted the kitchen (I had so much trouble picking a color for this room and eventually settled on a soft yellow and love it). We also decided we wanted to do wooden counter-tops since this area of the kitchen wouldn't get as much wear and tear.






After making the door (which we matched to the cabinet doors in the rest of the kitchen) and painting the base, and staining and sealing the counter it turned out like this...







Next we completed the other side and counter, which I apparently didn't get a picture of, but you can kind of see it in the background of this adorable picture of Rowyn and his aunt Anna...



At this point the built in was mostly complete, however we wanted to add shelves to the wall on either side and with the odd size containers we would need to store things above the fridge I decided to make crates myself to fit the space.







At this stage of the project our fridge that we had created this built in to fit was leaking quite a bit of water and a friend who was remodeling her kitchen offered to give us her old fridge. This was such a blessing for us, but ended up being taller than our old fridge. Luckily we only had to cut the trim off of the top and cut it to fit around the fridge and didn't need to make any structural changes *phew*


After one last trip to lowes with our little helpers....



we finally got the last supplies we needed to make the shelves and finish the built in. With the new wall color, new fridge, replacing the nasty ceiling fan with a normal light and everything else completed here is the final result!





For one last final reminder, here is the before and after:



I have to say, for our first real wood working project, I'm really happy with how it turned out, and I'm glad it's finally finished. :)