I realized I hadn’t talked about the kitchen since I first revealed it post reno almost a year ago and that post was more of a ”ohmygodi’msoexcitedtohaveakitchenimusttakepictures” kind of post. Let’s go into some details shall we.
As I have explained, the reno took so much longer than we were expecting. Thank God it was still warmish and we could live with our BBQ and paper plates.
Being the frugalista I am, we decided to demo ourselves. Something I may not have been so comfortable with had we not had Mike’s grandfather as a huge help and resource.
Just as a reminder, this is what she looked like before we moved in:
Given the awkward placement of the fridge (beside the balcony door) we think the kitchen has been renovated at least once. There is also a strangely placed wall outlet which leaves me to believe there were cabinets on another wall at one point. At any rate we didn’t love our kitchen so out it went. 
Do you see the damage the tile did to the wall? It was terrible to remove. We needed to have the entire wall with the window re-drywalled due to the amount of damage. Thankfully Mike’s uncle is a professional painter who fixed this to the point you’d never know anything was ever wrong. It sure wasn’t going to be my first DIY project!
The floors were an easy choice. We decided to extend the same hardwood that was installed on the rest of the top floor. This has pros and cons.
Pros:
-Easy to clean.
-Looks amazing.
-Warm on the feet (compared to ceramic).
-Much cheaper than ceramic.
-Hardwood floors add structural integrity to your house.
Cons:
-Given that our wood was a pre-finished Birch, it dents very easily. Birch is much ‘softer’ than other hardwood choices and having the very thick pre-finish layers causes dents quite easily.
-In our situation, even though we had it professionally installed and fixed the subfloor prior to, unlike the rest of the house, the kitchen floor squeaks in places. I’m guessing this is due to so many weights on the floor (cabinets, appliances) causing some slight bowing.
-Not affecting us, but if someone else wanted to update their kitchen with hardwood, they would need to remove their lower cabinets as hardwood must be placed underyour base cabinets.
Character Right? Damage done to the pretty floor from moving the appliances back 
Given certain time constraints we didn’t have a whole lot of time to decide on certain details of our renovation. We went with Home Depot for our cabinets and countertop selection. A lot of this had to do with their ability to make stuff happen fast.
We enjoyed the design process with Home Depot. They were great at making suggestions and voicing opinions for us, who had never owned a home or renovated before. They were a huge help. If it wasn’t for them I probably wouldn’t have had a bank of drawers in my kitchen because I forgot them in my original design. Oops.
We didn’t love their installation crew as much unfortunatly. He was a sub-contractor for them and just sort of rubbed us the wrong way {Sorry Dude, I don’t really care if you don’t like my kitchen tap, $350.00 for the one you think we should have isn’t in our budget}.
Choosing the cabinets was hard. It was probably the first time Mike and I had to actually agree on something design related. Mike is very traditional where I consider myself a little more eclectic. I really liked both white and black cabinets where he truly hated both. We both liked the dark wood though and it matched the floors perfectly. For this house it was, as I see it, our only option.
The countertop was also a little tricky and we ended up changing our minds at least three times. We didn’t go with granite for two reasons. One, money. Two, given the size of our total renovation we didn’t want to start overpricing our house for the area that we live in.
Anyway, enough with the babbling. Here’s what she looks like today, a little more dressed up and 95% done:
Do you like my furry centerpiece? 
She loves when I take her picture, can you tell?
I say the kitchen is 95% done because although I recently, finally, caulked the baseboards, patched the hole in the wall and painted the trim (it was only primed before) as all seen here:
Hole under outlet be gone!
Caulking makes a huge difference
I would still like to put a shelf or two in here and eventually change out the appliances. Not a priority right now though.
There you have it. All you needed and ever wanted to know about our kitchen!
Quite the transformation! The new layout seems to work so much better and the peninsula adds so much more counter space!
Thanks Kelly, we like that it divides the eat-in dining area from the kitchen, almost makes it seem like we actually have 2 rooms.
If you take a damp cloth (almost wet) , place it over the dents in your wood floor and go over it with a hot iron using the edge of the iron over the dents directly as well as the flat part on the overall area, there is a good chance the dents will absorb water and return to original.
Kitchen looks good Catherine, nice work
Thanks! I may try that! will it ruin the finish?
I’ve done it many times over the years, it works best soon as soon after the damage as possible, never ruin the finish but if worst comes to worst or id doesn’t work. it’s not hard to pop out a board or two and replace them… (hope you kept a few
)
Kitchen looks great. Built-in wine cooler?
It’s a ‘beverage fridge’ we were going to do the wine cooler but got the multipurpose fridge instead as I mainly drink red wine and Mike drinks rum. We use it a lot!
Wow!! It looks great!!l Your floors are beautiful and so is the wall color. Really all of it is. Nice job