Home Renovation 2013: Part 2--Kitchen

The kitchen renovation was the biggest and probably the toughest of all the rooms due to its sheer size and due to so many different elements that needed to be addressed. It's a long, galley style kitchen (although on a wider side than most) with lots of dark wood cabinetry, dark green walls (originally) and not a lot of natural light. Overall, the tone was very calm and earthy, which isn't a bad thing, but a bit too heavy for our taste and definitely not happy enough for a room that we spend so much time in. So, when we first moved in 4 years ago, we tried to make the room brighter by painting over the moss green walls with a cheerful yellow color and although that was an improvement, it just never felt like it was enough of a change. Here are a few "before" pictures:

lots of wood and overall earthy feel.

even with yellow, feels a bit heavy and dark.

this is definitely a room that gets a lot of usage.

This kitchen renovation involved learning and doing lots of new things like painting the cabinets and putting up a tile backsplash...which meant watching a lot of YouTube videos and then, just going for it! The toughest decision before starting the project was whether to paint over the wood cabinets and we feared it'll turn out horrible, but it was too integral to achieving the whole look that we were after, so we decided to be brave and take that leap. It was also a challenge to live and try to cook in a state of constant mess for a good couple of weeks.  Here are a few "progress" shots: 

getting ready for a fresh coat of paint.

dining table turned work station where all the cabinet painting took place.

trying to contain chaos as much as possible.

subway tile backsplash made a huge visual impact.

Well, after many takeouts and after all the dust had cleared, we were extremely happy with the end result! The transformation was huge and we achieved exactly what we wanted, which was a bright and airy kitchen and now there's a perfect balance of function and aesthetics:

even on a dark rainy afternoon, kitchen feels so much brighter!

we left the top cabinet open to keep it airy and gave the space a new function of drink serving area.

functional and beautiful!

It's hard to cover all the little elements that went into this room in one post, so I'll try to break it down further later.  There are few things more I would like to add to the room down the road, like maybe some pendant lights, but for now it is done and we're enjoying it everyday!

Just a few last points to ponder...

1. Painting cabinets is perfectly doable.  For a professional finish, do use high quality primer, a good paint brush, a paint retarder, and above all else, take your time in each step!
2. Speaking of time, do plan to be without a functioning kitchen for 2-3 weeks!
3. Do plan on living with a complete mess for that same time...a huge challenge for the OCD.
4. Cutting tiles by hand-held tools like nippers and hacksaws is doable for a small job like this room, but it is very time consuming and not the easiest thing...I would probably invest in a cheap wet saw and learn to use it if I had to do it all over again.