[JohninSC]

Here is what I have been working on my self for the past 3 months. A little background info, the house is right at 20 years young and my wife and I have lived here for 13 years. Our kitchen was not in bad shape we just wanted a new look. 5 years ago we repainted, put new counter tops and bought new appliances. So this is the starting point.

This is the last room to do, my wife loves to decorate so we started off by looking into refacing (trying to keep an undetermined budget) then going to Ikea. After Ikea I thought we had decided on what we were doing, a bit more expensive but why not.. Wrong .. The next day after Ikea we go to Lowe's and my wife dreams this up.

 

[JohninSC]

So the next day we get to talking and decide to go with Lowes. The cabinets are by Kraftmade and are going to take 4-5 weeks to make. Now I have a time frame to have the demo done and I get started. Half of my house has the ceiling blown and the other is slick, so I decide I'm going to slick the kitchen and the demo begins.

 

[JohninSC]

I really liked the molding so I took care in keeping it. I was really amazed at how it was constructed, I didn't know it was 3 pieces.

Now that most cabinets are out I started scraping the ceiling. I used a mix of hot water, dawn, and vinegar in a sprayer. It worked really good. I sprayed a 3x3 section and let it sit for a few minutes and it came right off.

 

[Jim F]

You should be able to use that molding over your new cabinets. That bulkhead over the old cabinets is a look but it wastes a lot of space. This is a link to my kitchen project http://www.diychatroom.com/f49/kitchen-95288/ . We had to make consessions due to space limitations. Most notably over by the basement door but it flows much better than before.

 

[JohninSC]

I ended up trashing the molding as it just wouldn't go with the cabinets well. We ordered maple crown molding with a coco glaze. The new cabinets are also taller for more room.

 

[JohninSC]

Here is the ceiling all mudded and primed. It turned out good and only took 3 mudding/sanding sessions.

Next I moved to taking up the laminate floor and building a window box seating in this area. I didn't know how to build one so I'm sure it's over built. The face is made 3/4" oak plywood. I also had to move the air vent.

 

[JohninSC]

 

[sixeightten]

The window seat looks pretty good. I think you need to dress up the bare plywood end with a 3/4x3/4 oak edge piece, and router the edge.

 

[JohninSC]

The window seat looks pretty good. I think you need to dress up the bare plywood end with a 3/4x3/4 oak edge piece, and router the edge.

I have that same trim piece to put on but I'm waiting to put it on until I'm done using it as a tool holder. The wife is going to get some cushions made for it also.

 

[JohninSC]

Here's the wife sanding down our old table top to see if we can restain it.

 

[JohninSC]

On to the cabinet install. Kraftmaid was really good to work with the guys delivered to my door and placed them where I wanted. The only complaint was I had one cabinet that need to be replaced as it looked like it was dropped in the factory and they tried to fix it and ship it. The box had no damage. They had me a new one in 2 weeks no questions asked and I got to keep the old one.

 

[JohninSC]

 

[SeeDBee]

That's quite a project. Looks great!

 

[cdnNick]

Did you consider making the window seat lid flip up and use it for storage? My wife would love a seat like that but we don't have a big bay window.

 

[JohninSC]

Did you consider making the window seat lid flip up and use it for storage? My wife would love a seat like that but we don't have a big bay window.

I did think about it but I didn't want seams and didn't want to take too much time building and figuring it out.

 

[JohninSC]

After I got the cabinets in I needed to wire up some lights. I only had one light before and I took that out and filled the hole. I went with 5 - 4" oil rubbed recessed lights. Over the sink had a fluorescent tube I took out and replaced with 2 pendant lights. I know I have to get a dimmer for them.

 

[JohninSC]

On to the counter top. I wanted to be really particular in picking my granite, I wanted to see what slab or slabs we were getting and how it would be laid out due to our U shaped kitchen. After about a week of looking through granite we found a nice large slab that we could piece in and hardly make out the seams.
The granite is Giallo Napoli and is the ONLY thing I did not DIY!

Put the appliances in, Electrolux induction cooktop and Elextrolux oven.

 

[JohninSC]

The dishwasher is a Bosch Panel ready and a Sharp Microwave with an auto drawer.

 

[JohninSC]

Next up was the back slash. We had this picked out before the granite came in but after mocking it up we found we didn't like it.

So we tried another but didn't love it either.

We ended up with this on the left.

I decided to go ahead an mount the lights for the cabinets

 

[JohninSC]