Kitchen Remodel Announcement

I am SO excited to be writing about the very fun fact that we have finally decided to remodel our kitchen. After years of dreaming, scheming, pinning, and planning, we've made the decision to remodel. We knew our house was in need of lots of updates, and like many other people did last summer when the market was so hot, hot, hot, we decided to try and make a move and buy a new house. And like many others, we got out-bid, or were beat to the closing table. Not to mention houses were going for asking price or even over! But one recurring theme kept popping up while we were house shopping, and that was the simple fact that we loved our current house. Sure we found other beautiful houses, but they just weren't as special as ours. They didn't have the same nice back yard as ours. Or they didn't have the same beautiful lake view as ours. Or they didn't have the same nice kids and families down the block like ours. Or they didn't have an awesome location that was in walking distance to our schools and parks and programs. Our house was forever etched in our hearts as we were house shopping and it made us realize that it really did have most of what we really needed....except a kitchen. 

Our house was a mid-mod fixer upper when we bought it, and we have chipped away at lots of projects over the years, but the one project that we never got to was the kitchen. And I'm going to tell you that when we bought our house seven years ago, the kitchen was almost a deal-breaker for me; that's how ugly it is. I'm not kidding. Take a look for yourself:

Hel-LO 1960! Wowza! I have no words, and I don't think I need any. I'm pretty sure (but I never would have guessed it if my husband hadn't of told me countless times) that these cabinets were high-end once-upon-a-time. The floor is hideous. The wood stain is like a yellow-tinge. The range is icky and old and falling apart. The cupboards get stuck when opening and closing and they also spray sawdust on everything inside below them causing me to have to rinse my dishes before using them. Yeah. Take it in. Take in alllllll the 1963 kitchen glory. This is one of those design styles that honestly makes me question what on earth people used to be thinking. 

Now I will say the one thing that I do like about this kitchen is the oodles of natural light. But yeah...it doesn't really look much better from this angle. Here's another:

I always wanted open shelving of some sort, so to play around with that concept, I ripped one of the faces of the cupboards off and tried styling it myself, you can see this to the left of the stove. Not so bad, if I say so myself, but it doesn't do much to help the poor kitchen.

Now the kitchen butts up to the living room, but is divided by this wall. Wanting to open up this space to create a large, open-air room the plan is to tear down the wall. Check it out:

The plan is for the wall to come down and become a large island. And bleeding into the living room like this, the kitchen remodel actually becomes a living room remodel too with new windows, and new flooring throughout. We will also replace the furniture, and mount the tv over the fire place. Oh yeah, and since the kitchen walls also divide between the dining room and kitchen and will be coming down too, the dining room also gets a face lift!

I actually don't think the dining room is all that bad. It needs new flooring (which will be same as the kitchen/living room), a new table, and paint! Easy fixes.

To facilitate our project, we've called upon the ever-so-talented Knuston Custom Construction and their amazing team of experts, which includes a wonderful designer, Erica, who has her own design company called Formgiva Design. We've met with Erica a handful of times now, and after lots of discussions and planning, here is the design concept she's come up with for the kitchen:

I go goo-goo for this black and white modern themed room. It's very similar to our bathroom remodel that we did a couple years back (which you can check out here).

Needless to say I'm over-the-moon excited. Will it be a long process? Yes! Will it be a big project? Yes! Will I document everything in live time? Also yes! I can't wait! And I can't wait to share the journey along the way. xo