A New Kitchen
Wow, it has been a long road, but oh, so worth it.
Back in August I started preparing for a full-blown kitchen renovation. I know that many of you have been following along, and seeing my teasers, and have been anxious to see the results. It was done a while ago but I really wanted to have some professional photos to show you, so that’s why it took a while to do my reveal.
Before things got started I set up a temporary kitchen in our rec room, which included a toaster, hot plate, and air fryer/oven combination. We moved our games, entertainment accessories, etc. out of the drawers and cabinets of the wet bar, and moved in our basic dishes, cutlery, pots and pans. This worked incredibly well, considering.
We were lucky to have a space to set this up, that had a sink (even though it was so tiny).
Eventually I put the table on furniture lifts (they use them to raise beds in dorm rooms) and this made it counter height, which made it much more ergonomically friendly. It worked out pretty well.
Once we were able to move our food prep and cooking downstairs, the full kitchen gut began. The kitchen was poly-ed off to help minimize dust throughout the house, and then the demo started.
And wow — even with all the right precautions in place, there is still so much dust.
One important takeaway from any renovation that involves drywall removal or replacement: be sure to include a full furnace and duct cleaning in your budget. It makes a big difference once the work is done.
I worked with some excellent contractors/trades and am so happy with the final results. The biggest difference in the new space is that my kitchen sink now faces my view (Sunshine Lake), and not the neighbour’s house. It was so worth the added expense of making some plumbing changes to move the sink and move the dishwasher into the island.
I hope that you like the end result as much as we do. It took a lot of time to get here, but part of working with a custom kitchen is that you can make adaptations along the way without having to undo pre-made elements. We made quite a few lane changes along the way, but again, we are very happy with our new kitchen and it is likely to last another thirty years.
Images of the kitchen before demo, noticing the cabinets do not go to the ceiling, and the only lighting is the florescent sunshine ceiling fixture. Earlier pictures show it with an oak box, which I later had painted out to blend more into the ceiling.
Some professionally done “after” shots. I love how much more lighting is in the space, and I especially love some of the custom implementations which include pendant lights by a local glass blower (Julia Reimer with Firebrand Glass Studio), artwork by my daughter’s future mother-in-law Cindy (www.cindyhergottpellerin.com), and a floral tile application.
