Kitchen Remodel (Part I)

Pretty much ever since we moved to Tucson, we have been working on remodeling our kitchen! When we sold our Mesa house, we made a nice chunk of change that we decided we would use to do some changes in our new house. It was a debate between the backyard and the kitchen (bet you can't guess who wanted to work on what) but after a week or so of living in the house, the kitchen won! So we had enough cash to get the supplies, but not pay for any labor. So we did EVERYTHING ourselves! Electrical, plumbing, cabinet installation, floor installation. Everything.

It's not that the kitchen was super outdated or anything (the house is only 5 years old...), it was just horribly designed. It is a massive space, but there were hardly any cabinets in the room! And the "pantry" was embarrassingly small. The door to it was seriously half a door. I've never seen a door the size it was. So here are some before pictures:

By the time I remembered to take "before" pictures we had already done some work. So originally the fridge was in the spot between the cupboards and the pantry. We decided to move the fridge to that blue wall to get some more cabinets and counter space in, but to do this we had to knock out the pantry and redo some electrical and plumbing stuff. The light switch that controls the lights over the main cooking area was originally right where we wanted to move the fridge. So we moved that switch down to where the other switches already were and while we were at it, Jarom put a ceiling fan in the kitchen and added a switch for that. It's best for a fridge to be on it's own circuit, so Jarom did some rewiring and put in a new outlet on its own circuit where we wanted the fridge to go. He also had to move some outlets up so they would not be blocked by the new cabinets. We also had to drop a new water line down to where the fridge is now which actually turned out to be the easiest part of this whole thing (Jarom thought it was going to be super difficult)!

The next project was to tear out the pantry. This wasn't super difficult, just messy. Along with tearing out the pantry, we had to remove all of the old cabinets and counter tops.

Over Labor Day weekend, we took advantage of some sales, sat down with a designer at home depot, and got a bunch of cabinets and counter tops ordered! We decided we wanted to do a white kitchen. I love the crisp and clean look of it! So we went with white cabinets, a white/gray marble looking counter top (it is laminate), a dark gray tile backsplash, light gray walls, and a dark wood floor. We are a month into this project and we are so close to being done! Next post will be about the installation of the cabinets!