Behold: Our New Kitchen!

We have done a fair number of reno­va­tions to this house since moving in: the basement, the windows, the bathroom, the entranceway and the hardwood floors to name the big ones. The last one left was the biggest of them all though: the kitchen. We ourselves are getting married this year, and so we decided we had better get the show on the road if we didn’t want to be embar­rassed by the ca. 1961 kitchen we started out with.

Our friend and past client Jessica helped us with the design and layout for the new kitchen. By ourselves, we were having trouble visu­al­izing the magnitude of the changes we were going to make, but she really helped us through it all. Pierre at Potvin Construction made up some great plans and sketches that helped us get a feel for how the space would look when we were done.

Here are the before pictures of the kitchen and layout. Yes, the cabinets really are that orange. The green tape marks on the floor show the outline of the new island.

Lovely eh?

The only things we kept were the stove and the fridge, both of which were fairly new. Everything else is gone…cabinets, tile floor, existing drywall…everything. The most exciting part though is how taking down the wall between the kitchen and living room has made the house feel brand new and much more open! But we’ll get to that.

Here you can see the upper cabinets on the way out:

Here we have a half-gutted kitchen. Steph at S&S Design and Construction managed the show, and he kept every­thing on track and, most important, on schedule. It’s a little freaky to see it like that again, but it had to be done…we had so much elec­trical work to do since we were moving the sink and the stove.

And now…the wall coming down. Holy heart-pounding.

Wowsers.

The next things to get done were the elec­trical and the plumbing rough-in. Once it was all inspected, up went the drywall, and it started to look like a room again.

After this, Christine did the painting, the tile floor was laid, and then…the cabinets went in!

We went with two colours: while glaze for the one wall and the island, and walnut stained oak for the pantry. Looks absolutely fabulous.

Next up: the new door was put in. Here’s the old door:

And the new door:

The hardest part of this whole reno though, was having the cabinets in but having to wait the two weeks for the granite to be cut, polished and delivered! Here is our slab before being cut:

But when it was done…well, take a look for yourself:

All in all, very worth­while, although expensive. The kitchen is fun again!

Speaking of fun…I set up a camera to take a photo­graph every 30 seconds while the tile floor was installed, the drywall was installed, and the cabinets were installed. Sped up 18 times, this is what it looks like (by the way, the bald guy hanging around is me!)

The drywall going up:

The tile floor going in:

The cabinets being installed:

…Mike