Kitchen Before and After (Two Year Houseiversary!)

Monday is our “houseiversary” and I cannot believe we’ve already lived here two years. We started on our kitchen the night we moved in and tore out the upper cabinets that night. Within the next week, we painted the kitchen, and within that month, we added the brushed brass hardware.  And then slowly over the next 23 months, we have slowly updated the remaining things you see here like the lights, faucet, and most recently, the backsplash. It may not always be in the budget or personal time to do everything at once. And you know what, that’s okay! There are still things I want to do in here that will have to wait. But I love the progress and the journey.

I decided to show the prices of these updates to you guys because I wanted to show that it’s not always about the $800 light fixtures or the $15/square foot tile. You can make a space beautiful with a little time, love, and patience.

I wanted to give a more in-depth look at each of these updates for my blog readers. I think I’ll go in order here as it actually makes the most sense chronologically for me.

Removing the Upper Cabinets: This was one of the first things I pointed out on the listing tour. I was like, if you remove these cabinets, you’d get so much natural light into the kitchen and I guarantee it would feel bigger. Luckily Cody was on board so this was the first project we tackled. Right after we got the keys to our house at 7:00PM that night haha. I don’t have a lot of “how-to” advice for this cabinet removal because it was mainly just demo work with some sheetrock repair. But I instantly was so happy the next morning when I saw the light pouring through!

Painting the cabinets: So this I can actually shed a little more light on than the cabinet demo. I started by removing the old (ugly) floral handles on every cabinet. Then, I filled the holes from them using “bond all-purpose putty” mixed with “cream hardener” and applied it with a putty knife. Next, I used “Jasco Easy Liquid Sander Deglosser” on every cabinet multiple times to remove the glossiness from the previous stain. Next, I very lightly sanded cabinets with drips (the people who stained these before us did a terrible job.) Then we taped and plasticed over just about every part of this room except the cabinets. I always say that the hardest part about painting is the prep and for a kitchen, it is very tedious to tape around every nook and cranny. Then we got to priming. Luckily, Cody’s dad was a painter and still has his paint sprayer so he came over and helped up spray everything. We let the primer sit overnight before giving it two coats of paint the next day.

Brushed Brass Hardware: Since I had filled the holes from the previous hardware, I was free to get any type of handles I wanted. I found these on Amazon and decided to take a chance on them for under $100 for the entire kitchen and I’m so glad I did. I love them and they’ve held up really well over the past two years!

Pendant Lights: The one dinky light in the middle of the kitchen was not cutting it as far as light or looks. I love the look of the lantern pendants but couldn’t fathom spending over $1200 per light like I was finding all over Instagram. I found these on Wayfair, waited for some sales, and bought them for roughly $110 each. Today when I’m writing this, they’re $137 each but maybe you just need to wait for a sale for them to go down. We love these lights because they’re not only practical but give a good focal point to the kitchen.

Fridge Handles: This is actually one of my most popular requests so I dedicated an entire blog post to this project. You’ll never guess the secret… towel bars!! Haha you can check out the full blog post here

Faucet: I also would say I ordered this one on a whim on Amazon (of course after reading reviews) and I’m so happy I did. We have has this one in for 5 months now and are still loving it. It has GREAT water pressure and I love the sleek/industrial look. We also bought a soap pump because the old owners had a hole drilled for their sprayer hose, that needed to be filled. The faucet is slightly shinier than the soap pup but you really can’t tell unless you’re getting up close and personal with it.

Backsplash: This is the most recent project that we completed last weekend. I plan to write an entire blog post on the process, but for now, I’ll link the tile we used here.