The Kitchen a Year Later

Welcome back to our week-long celebration of being a year-young new homeowner. This past weekend was our one year anniversary that we moved into our home, also known as move-a-versary. Like that term? You can use it 🙂

Today come with me into the kitchen, the heart of the home. And I have to say the kitchen is where we spend the most time outside of sleeping of course. I wrote about it way back, take a look at lots of before pictures of the kitchen here.
The kitchen we inherited when we bought this house last year had been remodeled about five years ago apparently due to a grease fire. The previous owner had her own cooking business so there was LOTS of grease in the stove vents. Have you ever cleaned your stove vents? You might want to 🙂
Back to the kitchen goodness though!

It is in the back of the house and was remodeled very nicely, except for maybe the floor, and the mis-matched walls and counter tops. But still we love it. Details on those items, below.
Here is the kitchen on closing day. Great cabinets and recessed lighting, lots of storage, nice island even if the counter top doesn’t match the rest of the counter tops. Did you notice?

 

Guess what is the first thing I did to it?

You smarties are right, I painted it.

That picture is funny because that extension cord was running the floor sander while the guys were upstairs refinishing the floors. It was the only outlet that was a 220 line. Humph, an old house quirk I guess.

The paint on the top is Chinchilla by Martha Stewart and the bottom is Ultra Pure White out of the can.

We hung up curtains for the french doors, which I love, we get so much light in there, it faces South.

See? Light!

The plate installation is from plates our guests decorated at our housewarming party. I wrote about how to hang them at Pretty Handy Girl. Brittany was so sweet to ask me to guest post for her, that was my first guest post, thanks Britt!

Other decorations include EAT art I made and a monthly calendar I also made.

 

Turning around are the side cabinets and baskets as our mail center. And cute purse hook of course.

 

I try as much as possible to keep these counter tops clean and clear. It is an ongoing task for sure. Same at your house I assume? Please tell me there is a cure.

 

Those cute jars with the sugar and cookie text were actually thrifted. Can you believe that find? I was very happy that day.
The counter top is laminate and doesn’t match the rest of the granite. Not sure why that is, it came that way. So I’ve been on the phone every few weeks with the granite dealer to score a remnant that will fit. No luck yet but I hope soon!

Speaking of mis-matches, see that tile wall in the back right corner? Not sure about that either. It seems to be the original wall that was in the kitchen and only the one wall was replaced with bead board (on the left) during the remodel. We will plan to knock that off and match it to the rest of the room. It runs all behind the fridge, under the counter at the sink and behind the stove.

That cute poster on the far wall is from a local book arts collaborative.

Recently I added a new rug by the sink.

What else do we have to do in the kitchen?

• Perhaps add a roman shade on the sink window.
• Remove the tile wall and replace it with drywall
• Replace the island counter top with matching granite
• Update the floor eventually

But for now we’re loving it. We have nice places to sit and eat, chat and catch up on the day.

See all my posts about the kitchen here and list of sources here. Thanks for visiting move-a-versary, the kitchen edition. See you soon 🙂