A before and after really helps me to realize just how far we have come in the last 2.5 years of living in this house. It’s always slower than you want, whenever money is involved and especially when you’re doing it yourself. But I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel of this kitchen project. My husband made me laugh the other day, he said, “If I wanted anything as bad as you want this kitchen completed, I can only imagine what I could accomplish.” So ya, I may talk about it a lot :)

The first step of this kitchen was making it work better for us. And that involved adding an island. It’s never going to be a huge space, but adding so much more workable counter space and two more places to sit has been so very helpful!

Can we also all laugh at my editing skills?? I will never be a photographer, but dang.

Things we did with the kitchen in “phase one” as I call it.

Paint the cabinets and change out hardware
Add an island
Paint the walls
Add open shelving/remove a cabinet
Added a temporary backsplash to get the idea of what one would eventually look like
Eventually as you will se below, we also painted the doors, changed their hardware, changed out the light fixture, and added a light above the sink.

The more I stared at the cabinets though, I just wasn’t in love with how bright white they were. I also have never understood having dead space above cabinets, especially in a smaller kitchen layout. Use every square inch!!

So to start off “Phase 2” was to remove the trim on the cabinets I was keeping, and to take down that corner cabinet. I could never figure out how to store, or reach things in it anyway, and by removing it, it gave me more symmetry around the sink.

Probably should have waited until Aaron was home to remove that, but I’ve never been one for waiting. Thankfully I have a brother in law who is an electrician who helped me deal with this random wire situation!

These were the colors I was considering. I wanted something that was still neutral, but that was warmer. Especially since my plan is to tile to the ceiling with white tile, I thought the contrast was nice. I painted samples, took polls, and ultimately went with the color Aaron picked out, Accessible beige. It has both a gray and tan undertone depending on the time of day and I love it.

So the next step in this reno was to build up the height of the current cabinets. Essentially I decided to keep the existing cabinets but to create a higher frame, that then I would cover with new doors.

The expression it looks worse, before it gets better was really holding true here for several months. Especially since I was kind of just making it up as I went. I wanted the spaces above my existing cabinets to be able to be another place of storage, rather than just enclosing them to fill the gap.

You can see me testing the different paint colors on the former cabinet doors. It was really slow going for a while because I could only work on the kitchen when Aaron was home to watch the kids because the saws were too loud to use during nap and bedtime. But you can see below once I added in the top trim, they were starting to take shape!

This tiny corner of open shelving that came together in a few days gave me hope as I stared at these open cabinets for week. I’m telling you, you want to test your patience and anxiety levels, take the cabinet doors off your kitchen and stare at it for a month.

So for the doors themselves, I ended up opting to make them myself. They are not standard sizes, and to have them custom made was going to be insane. Maybe someday I will buy new door fronts. But for now, I’m very proud of these and it fits with my mantra of better than before!

So I kept them very simple. I typically lean toward the shaker style door. Basically one big board for the back, and then trim pieces to create a frame. I also got this really cool wood trim that you iron on the edges, so that from the sides it looks like one solid piece of wood. It’s not perfect, but if you’re not looking for imperfections, I was pretty impressed. You can check out my insta highlights on it to see it in more detail (@jessicarayome).

The kitchen ceiling is your standard 8 ft, but changing these cabinet doors out really makes the room feel taller. You combine that with the recessed lighting we changed out and it’s a winner. Just wait until I add the backsplash that will be vertical and go to the ceiling too. Game changer.

Also I can’t tell you how many people have told me I should make the backsplash go all the way up on that small right side there. I know. I plan to. I ran out of wallpaper and it wasn’t worth the money for more for what I hope is just a few more months of staring at it like this. If it’s longer, I’ll buy more. The tile I want isn’t even subway tile. I digress.

Doors, doors, doors, so many doors. I caulked, and put in spackle, and sanded, and did all the things to try and make these look as seamless as possible.

I ended up doing one coat of primer and three coats of paint. I believe I used satin? I’ll check back and tell you. I also managed to put the handles on straight this time, which was a nice change from the first time I did it lol

I’m not exactly sure how cabinet depth fridges work, but I am extremely interested in them if they help this short girl reach above the fridge easier. I literally sat on top of the fridge for half of this project.

Nothing like painting cabinets you’ve already painted once before. The nice thing was, after a deep clean, I had basically primed everything with the white so it was easy enough to cover with the warmer color.

Next up was adding this cabinet space. It just seemed silly that the cabinet stopped short of the wall, and I loved the idea of a built in trash can. I was going to build it myself, but was able to find a pre fabricated cabinet base that then I cut to fit what I needed. Felt much more confident in it’s stability and it saved me some headache.

Obviously when I install new counters they will extend to this new cabinet as well. Which will actually give us about 16 more inches of counter space. Which in a small kitchen is huge. We lived with this cabinet unattached for about a week to make sure it didn’t get in the way or that we were constantly going to be bumping it or anything. Then we were good to go. I attached it both to the stud in the wall behind it, as well as the cabinet to its right. And once I added the bookcase, I attached it to that as well. It’s not going anywhere.

So this was a challenge as far as just making sure I didn’t saw without thinking through my cuts, but I removed the drawer and then added a pullout system for the trashcan. I added trim to the sides, as well as a drawer front. The wooden counter you see is just loosely nailed in so that the counter is of equal height and I can use it while I wait for the next bit.

I will spare you the boring details but the saga that was this Ikea bookcase was too much. I basically didn’t want to have to build drawers and somehow found the perfect width bookcase. By adding trim, framing the shelves, and making it reach the ceiling my goal was to make it look like it was intended for the space and always a part of the design plan. I also added some bead board to the backing just for some texture.

As long as it took, and shipping delays, and all the things, all things considered this project went smoothly. I think I stared and thought out the steps so many times in my head that I knew exactly what I needed to do. And would you believe me that even with three coats on the new doors, two on the island, lowers, and bookcase that I only used one can of paint. Please save yourself the headache and just buy the best kind they offer.

I’m so so thrilled with how it turned out and that I decided to go for it. Once we add in the counters and backsplash to the ceiling it will look much less choppy, but even as is I still love it so much more!

And I couldn’t forget to show our new chalkboard coloring wall that we moved over here! Which is perfect since that’s all he can reach anyway :)