Meet Our Ugly Kitchen

When we first bought our house in May 2014 (built in 1961), we envisioned remodeling the kitchen right away, but let's be honest… the money was not there. I thought if we buy new appliances, paint the cabinets and take down the painted wallpaper then that should spruce the place right up, right? Boy was I wrong! Buying new appliances and painting the cabinets was about as far as we got. The wallpaper turned out to be 3 layers of wallpaper that must have been glued on with industrial strength glue because that stuff was not coming off! And when some of it did come off, then I found bad things like a hole in the wall that was being covered by the wallpaper. I literally threw my hands up and quit. For a year we lived with some wallpaper, no wallpaper and a big hole. But at least we had new appliances and a fun cork floor (previous owner installed). Here's some before pictures of our kitchen.

The only existing item I liked in this kitchen was the cork floor. 

Not a lot of counter space and it overall is an awkward space especially at the end by the stove and fridge. The fridge wouldn't fit, so we had to cut the cabinet to make it fit.

Do you see the hole I found removing the wallpaper (left of the stove)?

When you walk in the front door all you see is this coat closet that doesn't even touch the ceiling. It is completely blocking the living room from the kitchen.

Coat closet blocking the space.

See that light fixture in the center of the kitchen? It can only be turned on by a secret switch hidden inside one of the cabinets. 

Back of the coat closet.

This window used to look outside, but the previous owners covered the patio to create a sun room. So now this window just looks into another room. 

Some of the cabinets were not functional and they even had different fronts on them as well. It was like the land of misfits for cabinet doors. And don't even get me start on how incredibly gross these cabinets were when we first bought the place. We spent a whole week cleaning the grim and even you don't even want to know what else out of them. Disgusting!