[ my kitchen before ]

SO HERE WE GO with the horrendous before pics! I snapped these pics when we first viewed the house, prior to putting in our offer (disregard our real estate agent in the pic!).

As you can see, this place was filled with pine. The pine ceilings are high and vaulted, all trim, doors, kitchen cabinets were pine. I like wood, but I'm not a huge pine fan so while we were viewing this place, all I could think of was 'how would I tone down all of this pine?'. It is also one big open room so I knew that the whole room would have to work together.

Our main complaints:
The kitchen layout was almost a square, with one small opening into it, making direct patio access awkward.
The weird L-shaped sink had caused water damage at the center seam which had bubbled up the laminate countertops in both directions so the entire length of countertop was going to need replacing.
And of course, too much pine.

I knew that the cabinets were going to become white. For me, this place would be more Hamptons beach house than cozy ski chalet so I knew the pine had to go. Although painting the ceiling would be great too, I was tackling this in baby steps and decided to revisit the ceiling issue once the kitchen was done and then decide if it was something I still wanted to change.

Since the cabinets were solid wood and a nice beadboard style, we knew that we would make use of the cabinets we had. Our goal was to complete this project as luxuriously as we could on a small budget so replacing cabinets was out of the question. As was paying someone to do the work. My guy is extremely handy so we knew we were going to tackle this ourselves. We just had to decide where we would put our money for biggest impact.

Even though we didn't have a plan yet, I'm impatient and decided to paint the top cabinets to start with just to see how it would look. And once I did, I was excited with the difference it already made to the space and realized that I might actually get the white beach house kitchen I was dreaming of! Stay tuned tomorrow to see our plan and the reveal!

lisa