One Room Challenge - Week 2
So, it is already Week 2 of the Fall One Room Challenge, I can't even believe we are a week in and I barely feel like I made a dent in my overall plan. Yikes! After you are done reading this post, please make sure you head over to the One Room Challenge Blog here to see all of the absolutely amazing projects going on around the world! Holy crap there is so much creativity and inspiration out there!
So, just to revisit what is going on with this kitchen. Below is the before picture from 5 years ago when I moved into this house with Jeremy and then a picture of the current kitchen as it is now after the small glow up we did 4.5 years ago when we thought we would move out within a couple of years. You can see the little bit we did went a long way in brightening up the space! But it didn't improve any functionality and we also used finishes that aren't really high quality or what we want for long term! If you haven't seen it yet, check out the Week 1 post here!
The plan for this 8 week renovation includes: Adding a wall of cabinets and plumbing for coffee bar on back wall, repaint all cabinets, new countertops on island and extending island, replacing backsplash throughout, removing upper cabinets around sink to replace with open shelving, and a lot lot LOT more! Here is the design concept I created for this space:
This first week I focused on getting the ceiling prepped and painted while we had the plumber come out and add another water/drain line for the bar sink. Plumbing is definitely out of my reno/diy abilities and not something I want to mess with myself (at least not yet) so we hired that part out! We had a few other plumbing needs for upcoming projects so we had them kill a few birds with one stone!
Ceiling painting is probably my least favorite thing to do, especially when it is in a space that I can’t just clear everything out to paint. Luckily Jeremy happened to be out of town this past week which made it a little easier to tackle the kitchen ceiling prep and paint! He is not a fan of the house being under construction (even though he doesn’t really help progress any projects - especially painting). So it always works better if he isn’t around during the prepping/painting phases where I don‘t need his help to lift things or catch things coming off my table saw.
While the walls had been painted before, the ceilings had not been touched since before I have lived here and they were pretty scuffed up and dingy looking. Also, all of our ceilings in our house have seemed to sag in the middle of the drywall sheets - like the builder just forgot to put screws down the middle of it or something. So I had a lot of prep work to do before I could even start to just fix the drywall seams and sagging! I added several screws down the middle and filled the divot where the drywall seam is clearly visible with more drywall mud. You know what I hate even more than painting ceilings? Drywall work on ceilings. Yuck. So much dust. But, I would rather it be right than half assed.
All of the crown molding also needed to be recaulked - I don’t think it has ever been done in the 11 years that Jeremy has lived here and in Michigan, and with the drastic changing of the temperature and moisture in the air throughout the year, it typically needs to be done periodically for a clean look. You can definitely see the difference from where I caulked and where it wasn't done yet. So much prep to do before its time for paint!!
It took me a couple of days to prep, but now I can finally I can get these ceilings painted! A couple of coats and it looks soooooooo much better. Definitely worth all of the trouble and only one oopsie!
In the meantime, I had my friends at Motor City Plumbing (great name btw) come out to add another plumbing line to the back wall. As mentioned above, I am turning this back wall into an entire bank of cabinets that will include pantry cabinets and also a bar sink. This is going to be the coffee spot so it will just make it 8 million times easier to have a sink right there instead of walking over to the main sink across the kitchen every morning. Since we had other plumbing projects for them to do anyway for upcoming projects, it really wasn’t that much more to add this new plumbing and will increase functionality in this kitchen 10 fold. I am so excited to have this second sink in my kitchen!
You can see from the before picture that we had a makeshift coffee bar on this back wall already with the wine bar furniture we had on this wall. It just didn’t give us much storage, didn’t really utilize the wall well, and I was always afraid to spill liquids from the coffee maker onto the furniture and ruin it. This new wall will almost double my storage in this kitchen…. Yes… DOUBLE!!
Since my new cabinets have been sitting in my garage since April, they are next up to get installed this next week. They have most definitely worn out their welcome in the garage! Installing cabinets is something I have never done before so luckily my dad has volunteered to trek up to Michigan this weekend to help me install them and make sure I do it right!! It has only been one week and I'm already feeling the pressure that it is going to be so hard to get this kitchen done! AHHHHH! Hopefully I can turn it up a notch in the upcoming weeks to knock a bunch out!
I would love to know what you think after week!
Happy designing + diy-ing!
Katie
Head here to check out last week's post or the Final Reveal from the Spring:
