Our Kitchen Renovation is Complete!

****First of all, I would like to ask you to pray for Rachel who's surgery is Tuesday, the 24th, at 7:30 a.m. Click on her picture in my sidebar to find out more. Thanks!

Finally!!! We have finished our kitchen renovation!

For those of you who are new to my blog, about 8 weeks ago a pipe burst in my kitchen and made a huge mess!

So we then had an unplanned kitchen renovation on our hands!

But I have to say that we took our lemons and made some lemonade.

This is what our kitchen looked like before the pipes busted.

(Some of the following is copied from a previous post.)

These were the original 40 year old cabinets in our kitchen.

Notice the soffit above the cabinets? Every since we moved into our house five years ago, I have wanted to tear down that soffit to see what was underneath. Were there pipes that couldn’t be moved? Wiring? Nothing at all? I wanted to get rid of the soffit so I could have taller cabinets.

Well….since our kitchen already looked like a dump site, we decided to bust a hole into the soffits and see what we could see…

Nothing much there….

Or there…

A little wiring there…

But nothing that could not be tucked up into the rafters.

I was SOOOOO excited! I was about to get me some new tall cabinets.

So we tore it out. (No my husband is not going gray…that’s just drywall dust in his hair!")

Now the soffits are gone! Yipee!

Then I decided to hire the hottest cabinet maker I could fine…

and well, my husband won hands down!

He started by building the cabinet frames.

Then he hung up new drywall to cover the ceiling, installed lighting in the cabinets, and underneath the cabinets…

He also added crown molding to match the rest of the kitchen.

The microwave goes in the space where you see the wire and metal frame. I wanted the cabinet above the microwave to stay open, so we added beadboard to the back of it.

Here’s the other side of the kitchen…

The two cabinets in the middle do not have lights inside them because they will have doors. We put beadboard in the back of the cabinet above the refrigerator because it will be left open as well.

Then my husband added some trim inside the cabinets to hold glass shelves. I wanted to be sure the light on top was able to shine all the way down to the bottom.

We had a carpenter from Georgia make our cabinet doors. He had made some cabinet doors for my mother and father-in-law, so we knew he would do a great job!

To our surprise, my in-laws paid for our cabinet doors in honor of my mother who just passed away. What a precious tribute! Thank you!

For the hardware, I decided to go with handles instead of knobs on my cabinets. I think they fit perfectly with the “look” of the kitchen.

We got our light above the sink at Lowes. It’s called a vintage schoolhouse light.

I still haven’t decided if I want a window treatment over that window.

I love that we left the cabinets above the microwave and refrigerator open so I can create cute little vignettes for each season. (However, I am not very good at creating vignettes. I need your help! Maybe a “vignette party” in the future?)

Here is my kitchen all lit up. I love having the extra lighting!!!!

Now I am going to show you something even more amazing!!!!

You want to see the “before the before” picture?

This is what the kitchen looked like when we bought our house 5 years ago…

(I took this picture with a disposable camera, thus the poor quality.)

And now 5 years later…(at the same angle)

I am DEAD serious! That is the same kitchen! Can you believe it? We’ve come a long way baby! I think the hubster and I have a pretty good eye for “potential”!

I asked my sister if she would have bought my house 5 years ago with a kitchen that looked like that? And she said, “I wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole!”

Oh well…

Since we worked really hard on this kitchen, I am going to share it on

Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch

Make it for Monday at Cottage Insticts (I love this girl!)

DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land

Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Chic Cottage

It’s so very creative at It’s so Very Cheri

Blessings,