Before and After-The kitchen

We have been using the kitchen since we moved in and had completed most of the work in October.  I revealed the range and the sink in prior posts, but I haven’t shared the full before-and-after because we were missing one major detail….cabinet doors.  I do find it kind of funny how many people thought it was complete when they came over.

Well, I can happily say that it is now 95% complete.  (Is anything ever 100% complete in an old house?)

Here is the kitchen before:

Before Kitchen North View

Before Kitchen South View

As you can see, there were virtually no cabinets, no appliances, the floor was in rough shape, and all the trim had all been replaced.  What you can’t see is how “spongy” the floor felt.  Every time you walked through the room, the cabinet doors would clatter from the floor moving.  A bit disconcerting to be sure.

Before repairing the spongy floor, we wanted to see how careful we had to be with the original floors.  We would always rather save the original floors, but unfortunately we could not in this case.   The hardwoods under the linoleum were just too far gone.  They were stained and damaged beyond repair.

Damaged old kitchen floor.

And they smelled…bad…who knows of what.  So, up came the linoleum and the hardwood floors.  No easy task when the hardwoods were nailed down with these:

The reason we are all up to date on our tetanus shots.

After the floors came up, we had to sure up the floor.  To do this, we had to run a 25 ft. microlam board all the way under the house and jack it up with floor jacks.  The floor jacks were then cemented into caisons.

Here, you can see the hole we cut into the kitchen sub floor so we could pour the cement into the caison for the floor jack.  It was fun to watch the big men wiggle in and out of this hole to dig the hole in the ground and set the floor jack.  Cheap entertainment.

Hole in the floor for the cement pour.

I won’t bore you with all the details, but here is what we ended up doing when it was all said and done:

• Remove linoleum and hardwood flooring
• Repair sagging floor
• Rewire and replumb everything
• Remove the 1950’s style trim and replace with custom milled trim to match the original trim in the house.
• Patch the plaster
• Install the tin ceiling
• Paint
• Have flooring custom milled and installed to match the original flooring in the house.
• Install new gas line for the range
• Install all new appliances
• Build and install all cabinets – hubby built all the cabinets!

So, without further adieu….here are the afters:

West wall

Hoosier cabinet we found on Craigslist and antique phone we found at an antique store.

Here are the cabinets that hubby made.  Didn’t he do an awesome job?  It only took 5 months to get them done, but totally worth it.  And we probably saved $20,000 by building them ourselves.

Custom cabinetry made by the hubby!

And here are the side by sides:

North East view

North West view

South West view

So, there you go!  Still lots to do (like most of the rest of the house), but at least I can cook in a beautiful space!  And, living too far out of town for pizza delivery means I better cook!

We still plan on doing some trim work, will add a backsplash behind the range, and will eventually build the refrigerator into a cabinet, but for now we are done!