Kitchen Progress: 3/4 Finished!

The old family office building, that is now our home, had a kitchenette area that wasn't big enough to convert into a real kitchen. You can see in the photo below that there is an A/C unit and a wall on the right. We just couldn't fit a dishwasher and a fridge in that space, and it would be necessary since that's the side the water is run on and it would otherwise be very expensive. We don't like expensive!

The kitchenette area of the office before demo.

We took out the two walls you see above to make the living room/kitchen one big space. You can see how thick the doorway into the back part of the house is. It is so thick because it is the old exterior wall. Everything behind it was an addition added later, which is why it is carpeted/concrete and the core of the home is wood flooring.

This is the left side (you can see the same wall on the right) after demo. There's an air vent that needed to be moved so we could put cabinets along that wall.

Please note the horrific state of the floors! The darker portion in the back is actually stained and damaged from some tremendously strong glue used to place down some vinyl kitchen flooring. We used what can be described as giant razor blades on broom sticks to scrape up the tile. We didn't think that floor was salvageable but luckily we found a great floor guy! 

My dorky sketch I made in Google Sketchup then colored in Photoshop of what I wanted the kitchen to look like. 

I decided the blue cabinets were too much with our blue monster couches, and opted for all stained. I might paint the back of the island still though! We went with a much lighter granite, too. I also nixed the long modern handles for shiny Martha Stewart boutique looking ones from Home Depot. If you're renovating your own kitchen, hardware is one of those things that creeps up on you when it comes to price. Luckily, it isn't a necessary thing so you can live without them entirely, or buy all upper and then all lower later. We just bought handles for drawers for a while because all together it came out to nearly $200 just for our rather modestly priced hardware.

I can assure you everything isn't this... orange. I guess I forgot to edit this photo! 

I am incredibly pleased with what we have so far. The granite is called Kashmire White (yes, with a K) and we got it for a steal at a local granite place. Home Depot had granite starting at $30 per square foot and we paid half that! More on that later.

You might also notice the change in the cabinet layout above the sink. We did that for symmetry's sake. Here are a few more photos:

You can see the antique hardwood floors in all their beautifully flawed glory. Looove it! I also chose to have two vertical drawer cabinets in the island since I couldn't fit them in anywhere else as I wanted Lazy Susans in the lower corners. I think the drawers also give the island a dresser look, as if it were a piece of furniture; at least that's what I was going for! Now we just have handles, beadboard backsplash, and lighting to accomplish!