One of the biggest projects we tackled in this house was our master bath.  When we moved in, the master bathroom still boasted its 1984 decor: shiny peach floor tiles, three competing patterns of mauve/gray/peach/green/maroon wallpaper, popcorn ceilings, fluorescent lighting, an art-deco-style frosted glass window, two-toned faucets, cultured marble countertops, gray and teal painted cabinets, and a cave-like shower stall.  Aside from the bathroom's overall spaciousness, it was a disaster, and these "before" pictures don't do the horrors justice:

It was so sad, wasn't it?

For budget reasons, we initially planned only a cosmetic update, but as luck would have it, a shower leak forced us to remodel completely.  :-)

The renovation took much longer than expected because of contractor issues, but ultimately, we got (most of) what we wanted: a streamlined bathroom with a simple layout, luxurious finishes, modern amenities, and a warm, traditional style consistent with the house's architecture.  We didn't over-personalize or do anything too trendy, because we know we'll upgrade from this home within the foreseeable future and wanted to maximize re-sale value. To that money-saving end, we left most of the plumbing and electrical in place.

So, welcome, to the improved master bath:

We punted the 80s-style jetted tub that no one ever used in favor of a double shower with Turkish travertine, oil-rubbed bronze Grohe fixtures (including three shower sprays: traditional, rain, and handheld), and frameless glass.  The window has rain glass to permit privacy while still allowing light.  A long bench provides ample seating, and two niches house all of our toiletries.  The shower now measures 6' x 6.5' and is the centerpiece of the room.

His-and-her-vanities flank the right and left ends of the bathroom and adjoin his-and-hers closets.  We also have a full wall of extra-deep linen cabinets, which add the equivalent of extra closet space.  All of the locally made custom cabinets are solid cherry and stained a dark espresso to compliment our bedroom furniture.  The cabinet knobs are from Restoration Hardware, as are all of the linens and accessories.

The countertops are Madura Gold granite; the floor is Italian travertine; the oil-rubbed bronze vanity faucets are from Delta; the wall paint color is Sherwin-Williams Netsuke.  A combination of recessed, pin, directional, and ball lighting replaced the old fluorescents; the ceiling was lifted; an oil-rubbed-bronze ceiling fan helps keep things cool.  And framed photographs of the ocean at Carmel and a river in Aspen are apropos for the water closet.

Much better now, right?

This project was contributed by one of our fabulous readers! We love to share your projects with this great blogging community. So, if you have projects from kitchen renovation ideas to small bathroom remodels, overhauled and repurposed furniture, spray paint updates you name it please send it in! Thanks for reading Remodelaholic!

If you like this post, please check out these other bathroom remodels as well!

Here she is, in all her tract home glory! You probably have these same cabinets too. Stained oak! To me, yuck!!  Now, some people really like this look and if you do, I hope your not offended that I don't.  Everytime I walked in my kitchen, the grain in that oak just screamed at me!  

In my home, you can see the kitchen from the living room, and I hated that! Because those cabinets were awful to me!

We also got granite countertops, which are an absolute dream!!  You can put anything hot, right out of the oven on this baby and nothing happens!  I know some people are scared to do that, but not me !

Here are some good pictures of what our breakfast room looked like before I painted the kitchen cabinets. I apologize for how dark all the pictures seem.

The curtains were actually tablecloths cut in half and pinned up to create the v effect. I loved these, but since the kitchen was getting such a big face lift, I couldn't leave this side of the room out! I got the rug from Pottery Barn years ago, and it has been great!

I love the look of mismatched chairs at the table. It is such a quirky look, and I love anything quirky! However, most of the chairs were found at flea markets or estate sales and they weren't in the best condition. I really feared for people to sit in them sometimes. How tragic would that be, if someone sat down and tumbled to the ground!!? So, I was on the hunt for some fabulous chairs!

I think the new chairs are a showstopper!!! I purchase these chairs at Weir's furniture store. If you live around the Dallas/Ft. Worth area you have heard of Weir's! It is a Christian family owned store and everything they have is to die for!

I took down my beloved curtains and opted for bamboo shades instead. We found these at Lowe's. We lined them with white privacy liners, which was very easy to do, and hung them up! I think it gives the kitchen a more updated and cleaner look.



This project was contributed by one of our fabulous readers! We love to share your projects with this great blogging community. So, if you have projects from kitchen renovation ideas to small bathroom remodels, overhauled and repurposed furniture, spray paint updates you name it please send it in! Thanks for reading Remodelaholic!

If you like this post please check out these past Kitchen Features:

Wall Paper Be Gone! Kitchen Transformation

Hi! I'm Stephanie from Binkies and Briefcases and I'm waaay beyond excited to have our kitchen featured here today! Remodelaholic is one of the very first blogs I started following and has been such an inspiration to me! We live in an old split-level house that was built in 1965, so we need LOTS of inspiration. My husband and I live on one income, have two little ones and another on the way, so we try to do all of our remodels on a tight budget. That's why we turned to Craigslist and ReStore when it was time to overhaul our kitchen.
So here it is, a story about how patience and hard work can get you what you want... i.e this-

There is still a little bit of work to be done, but I thought it would be fun to look back and see how far we've come.

This was our kitchen before. I really don't have any kind words about it. The old disintegrating cabinets used to leave my dishes full of sawdust, the shelves were sagging and not secure, so I couldn't use half the cabinets anyway, there was a giant burn mark on the laminate counter, fake bricks, the floor wasn't level....I could go on, but I won't. I just tried to focus on the fact that one of the reasons we bought this house was because of the large rooms with a lot of potential.

We got an $8,000 tax refund that year, so I decided that was going to be my budget for the remodel. For everything. New cabinets, new counters, new appliances, new floors, etc. For this room AND the attached dining room.

The dining room before. Yeah, it was bad, y'all.

Even though $8,000 is a lot of money, that is a very,very,very tiny budget for remodeling an entire kitchen and dining room. So said the people at Lowes, anyway, when they quoted me $12,000 just for cabinets. There was no way that I was pouring the typical 25-30 grand into this kitchen. We would never be able to recoup an investment like that in our area. Plus, we were doing a cash-only refund and I don't have that much extra cash lying around. I was NOT putting our young family into that kind of debt for granite counter tops.

Of course, I am entirely too stubborn and impatient to live with a kitchen looking that that for very long. (I know I keep saying "I," Eddie actually did most of the work, but he was great about letting me make most of the decisions since the kitchen is mostly my space. He did veto the tile, though. More on that later.)

The whole thing needed to be gutted. Don't worry, we reused the cabinets and counters for storage in our garage and basement.

I made a list of what I wanted in my dream kitchen. It looked like this:

-nice cabinets
-solid surface counters
-stainless appliances
-a new floor (preferably tile)
-a new back splash (preferably tile)
-an island
-a new pantry door
-pretty molding

Ok, so the floors and the backsplash are not tile, but I can totally live with that. I still got everything on my list. Want to see?

Here we are 2 years later, after a lot of thrifting, recycling, sweat, and less than $8,000:

Yay! The cabinets are solid cherry wood and the counters are Silestone. They even have some cool custom features, like a pull-out spice rack and sheet pan dividers.

(hint for later: There's something a little off about the doors on both of these cabinets)

Plus they included the same pantry cabinet, decorative stove hood, appliance garage, and lazy susan corner cabinets that really jacked up the price of my cabinet quote from Lowes!

We still have a short to-do list in this area that includes crown molding for both the walls and the cabinets, shoe molding, and touch-up paint in a few areas. I'd also like to refinish the hand-me down table and get different chairs, but that is not very high on my priority list at the moment.

Cost break down:
Cabinets, Counters, Sink & Faucet: Craigslist, came as a set for $2,000
Uhaul rental-1day: $100
Hardware: $150
Labor to hang cabinets &; install counters and sink, and relocate dishwasher: $1,600
New floor: Home Depot, Allure Vinyl $800
Paint: $50 (Valspar Green Tea Leaf and Brandied Pear)
Lightfixtures: $50 (Lowes & Craigslist)
Island: $315, made from an old dresser we found at our local reuse center
Beadboard, wainscoting, and floor boards: $500
New window treatments: JC Penny $150
Stove: Free!! Craigslist (I bought it for $75, then sold our old one for $80)
Accessories: $0 Tempt-Tations line from QVC, all gifted. My family knows I collect them.
Table and Chairs: $0 hand-me-downs from my dad
Dining Room Shelves: Ana White's ledges- $40
Sewing Table: $50 Goodwill re-do
Dining Room Bench (not pictured): JC Penny on sale w/promo code: $120
Refigerator: hhgregg: $1,300

Total: $7,225

The remaining $775 left on my $8,000 budget will go toward the moldings and maybe a pot rack or a larger scale light fixture above the island.

We have even had an architect in the house who estimated that the value of the kitchen remodel was about $30,000. We realize that we will not get that kind of a resale value in our area, but it still feels pretty sweet to hear!

My tips for budget kitchen remodels (not that you asked):

1. Check Craigslist every day and your re-use center every week. So many people tell me how lucky we were to find this set, which of course is true, but I didn't just find it the first day I looked on Craigslist. It took months of research. Since we did our remodel, I've even found a gorgeous set of antique white painted walnut cabinets at the reuse center. That stung a little, because I would have bought those over mine in a heart beat, but they were also priced more than twice what I paid, so that took a little of the sting out. Be proactive. If you want something specific, like stainless appliances, check the appliance section of your local Craigslist multiple times a day. You better believe that stove was only listed for a few hours before I had an appointment with the sellers to go pick it up!

2. Find what you like and make it work in your space or know what you want and make it to work in your space. (Those are different.) Obviously, these cabinets and counters were not built for our kitchen, so there are some quirks. We had to relocate our frig and our dishwasher, three of the doors on the cabinets open the opposite way of how they should (No one has ever noticed this. Can you find them?), there is one faintly noticeable seam in the corner of the counter top, and the built in desk doesn't go all the way to the wall. Those were all minor prices to pay for a savings of about $25,000. I also knew I wanted an island, but our space was too narrow for one made from traditional cabinetry, so I searched (again, for months) and eventually found an old cruddy dresser with prefect bones to transform into a great island.

3. Patience and flexibility. This was the hardest part for me. Sometimes I get frustrated because it's been 2 years for crying out loud and this space still isn't finished, or because I have a great idea but we can't afford it at the moment. The best deals are collected over time and eventually God will provide, even if it's not on my time frame. (which would have been immediately, please) For instance, it was over a year in between installing the cabinets and counters and finding an amazing deal on a stove. Yes, it was frustrating using an old, ugly stove that constantly lost heat because the oven door was wonky, but eventually I got a beautiful new-to-me one for free. I also had to be flexible because I wanted a tile floor like nobody's business. I've owned three houses and never had real tile in my kitchen. I was saving tons of money in other areas, so I felt justified splurging on tile, but it would have meant that we had to replace the entire subfloor, which would have been a HUGE undertaking, not to mention added expense. Plus, it would have been an over-improvement for the neighborhood. Vinyl it was. I pouted for a while over the vinyl because I knew whatever we did in the kitchen would also go in both bathrooms and the foyer, but now I actually like the fact that the vinyl is easier to clean and better for the kids. Sometimes you can learn to love, or at least like, the compromises.

This project was contributed by one of our fabulous readers! We love to share your projects with this great blogging community. So, if you have projects from kitchen renovation ideas to small bathroom remodels, overhauled and repurposed furniture, spray paint updates you name it please send it in! Thanks for reading Remodelaholic!

If you liked this post we hope that you will check out theses past kitchen renovation features!

Refinished Kitchen Cabinet Doors Painted White

Major Kitchen Overhaul: Island, Cabinets, Floor, Windows

When we first considered buying the house we currently live in, Mr.A and I made a list of pros and cons of moving and selling our house that we had just built two years earlier. One of the pros we listed on our sheet was NO large projects needed. HA HA! If you know anything about me at all, I love to just dive in to projects, I start projects while my husband is at work and doesn't know what is going on. (I've been trying to work on that by the way).


We moved into the Colonial as I like to call her, On October 1st. We started demolition of the kitchen the weekend of Thanksgiving. Yeah, ummm....I didn't waste time.



So now here is the real professional part of this blog, my floor plan drawings. They are literally drawings done by me and a black sharpie. Please don't e-mail me asking for this professional service, it's a one time deal. Ok, seriously, I didn't know how else to explain the layout so here it is:

See, I told you it was real professional like.  It's hard to explain to people through pictures what we did but we basically moved the kitchen into this useless funky room that had a fireplace and then we tore out the old kitchen and that's where our kitchen table, pantry and mudroom are located.  We  had to move the exterior door, put in a sliding glass door and used our fireplace for our oven.

That concludes the tour of the kitchen, now we are moving onto the funky/useless room.  This picture is taken from the position of the exterior door, facing to your left, the kitchen would be on your right and you can see through the one doorway into the dining room which is brown and blue:

This picture is taken from the hallway looking towards the exterior door, the kitchen would be on your  left.

This is the view from the doorway that leads to the dining room, the kitchen is behind the paneled wall. 

Now if you aren't totally confused, here's one of my favorite pictures, demolition!!!  I love using a sledge hammer and destroying things, maybe that's too much information for you.

When designing the kitchen we wanted something that would fit in with the rest of the house.  We were going for a more classic feel than a modern one.  The subway tile, white cabinets, drawer pulls and hardwood floors gave us the feel we were looking for and we often hear from people, "Wow, this really fits in with the style of  your home."  We also really like the layout and are glad we flipped things around.  The other kitchen was like the batcave, it was dark, smelly and you really couldn't hear what else was going on in the house.  That wasn't cool with me.


Some of my favorite things in my kitchen are that my oven is in the fireplace.  With little kids running around I never have to worry about them touching a hot oven when I'm trying to take something out of the oven.  I love, love, love my cupboards that have glass doors.  My pantry is wonderful and I'm really glad we decided to put one in the kitchen.  We have multiple closets in the  hallway behind the kitchen that we could have turned into a pantry as well but we decided against that.  Thank goodness!  I did order a bookshelf type cabinet that was supposed to go on the end of the island but somehow that didn't get ordered and by the time it was all figured out, everything was installed and done.  That is the one thing I wish I had but I can definitely live without it.


I am quite happy with the amount of cabinets we have.  If we didn't have the pantry then I would be really limited with space.    I did order a bookshelf type cabinet that was supposed to go on the end of the island but somehow that didn't get ordered and by the time it was all figured out, everything was installed and done.  Three years later there isn't anything I really would change about  my kitchen layout, design or style.  I think turned a dark, poorly designed area into a bright, well functioning kitchen for our family while staying under $15,000.  


Also, if you would like to see more of what we've done to our house, please check out our Cloffice Reveal,Mudroom Makeover and Pantry Makeover. 

This project was contributed by one of our fabulous readers! We love to share your projects with this great blogging community. So, if you have projects from kitchen renovation ideas to small bathroom remodels, overhauled and repurposed furniture, spray paint updates you name it please send it in! Thanks for reading Remodelaholic!

If you liked this post please checkout our past kitchen renovation features such as these:

Quick Clean and Organize Your Cabinets

Kitchen Remodel - A Total Transformation

Kitchen Renovation Complete Overhaul

Complete Kitchen Remodel

Freshened-up Kitchen Remodel Around Existing Countertops

I am really excited to show off Kristin's kitchen today.  Her kitchen is one of my favorite kitchen transformations in all of blogdom!  It is so inspiring, let's see what she did to create this:

overnight, how about 5 years to be exact.

So here is my before picture right before we moved in. Over the years I kept a binder with pictures of my dream kitchens and drooled over model homes with eat in islands and gourmet stove tops. Remember the kitchen from the movie Something's Gotta Give, talk about making my heart pitter-patter. It is renowned for its elegant simplicity.

I love white kitchens, and consider them to be a classic. In my mind, you can never go wrong with a white kitchen and there is such an elegance about them. I also love the look of cottage kitchens; I needed to come to a happy medium. Overall, in the end we achieved a pretty traditional kitchen yet toned down with a twinge of French and cottage.

Remove all of your doors
Prep the room covering everything you don’t want painted
Remove hardware and your hinges. 
If your cabinets have gaps or dings fill them with wood filler.
Empty all your cabinets
Degrease all the doors, draws and frames. Tsp is a great degreaser as is vinegar and hot water.
Sand everything I used an electric sander with medium grit (80 or 100).
Prime with oil based primer; Foam rollers will give you the look as though your cabinets have been sprayed.
Lightly sand

 
Caulk away. Caulk can be your best friend; hiding all imperfections and watching them magically disappear once the paint is applied.
Here is the exciting part, Paint your desired color using a foam roller or having them sprayed!!!
NOTE: Latex top coat paints will adhere perfectly to oil based primer. Latex primer paint over oil paint will not work at all.
Let it dry, buff out any drips and give it another coat.
Glaze,

Now…I can’t lie. After I had sanded all my bottom cabinets, primed and started to paint, superman came and saved the day! You see, we were doing this all ourselves because the quotes that came in made me gasp and I said who needs a painter I’ll do it myself. Did I mention I have 37 cabinets and 20 or so drawers? Then my hero (painter) who used to work for a large builder was out of a job and needed money came by! He gave me a quote that made me gasp, this time in a good way. I hired him immediately and told him to start, before he changed his mind. I was so excited and he probably thought I was a little crazy getting so giddy about paint. He finished sanding, priming and then sprayed our cabinets; he was done in 2 days. It most likely would have taken me at least 6 more weeks. We were left to reinstall cabinet doors and drawers, replace the hinges, hardware and glaze. This alone took us about 2 months prior to working about 2 months on adding height to the cabinets and rebuilding the island. I know that sounds like a lot of time but we have 3 little ones and only one of them in school full time. So this project was really only done in our spare time without jeopardizing family time. 

I really love the look of Staggered cabinets, I just didn't care for the price tag.

Build a box using pine plywood in a smooth finish.
Anchor the box to the top of your existing cabinets.

Apply new crown and nail to the top of your boxes.

*We went with a double stacked baseboard on the bottom and crown on the top of the baseboard.

Nail small wood trim to hide the seams between the old cabinet and the new addition.

This project came with lots of trial and error. You definitely need to be on the tolerant side if you are taking this on yourself. When something did not look right we took it down and started over. This is your time to get creative.  This is a big project but definitely worth all the elbow grease!

I have to admit I loved not having doors on my cabinets, I loved the open feel, I didn't like the dust. SO the glass went up.  I had painted all the oak doors creamy white prior to this.  They get pretty scuffed up in the process so I would have saved the painting for after the cuts were made.  Remove the center panel, a router would come in handy here....on our list of things to purchase this year.

 

Press the pane of glass into the groove, let it dry overnight. I still need to add a simple plastic frame clip just in case but I don't think that glass is going anywhere!

Before

After

The final shots:

This project was contributed by one of our fabulous readers! We love to share your projects with this great blogging community. So, if you have projects from kitchen renovation ideas to small bathroom remodels, overhauled and repurposed furniture, spray paint updates you name it please send it in! Thanks for reading Remodelaholic!

Yes my friends, you read the title correctly! My kitchen cabinets are DONE! Had you given up on me? For those of  you stopping by for the first time, I started my kitchen cabinet transformation almost three months ago. Meaning that this reveal has been a long time coming. I knew it would take awhile, but did not anticipate it taking this long. I thought a couple of weeks at the most. Whew, this was a project {to say the least}. As usual, I knew exactly what I wanted the finished project to look like, but it took a lot of reading, inquiring, trials and errors to get these cabinets the way they are now. I won't lie, it was not an easy task. We hit a lot of speed bumps along the way where things didn't work as we had planned which caused major delays. Are you ready to see? Of course you are!

If there was anything in the house that made me doubt our purchase, it was the kitchen. Oh the kitchen! There was nothing, not one thing, that I liked about this room. It was everything I wasn'tlooking for during our search for a new home. But it was a great layout and it had some serious potential. Luckily I have an eye for these things and I was able to overlook the ugliness not so great features of this kitchen in order to see the kitchen I could create. 

So here it is, our kitchen circa 2007 

{these pics were taken during inspection using a point and shoot, so excuse the crappiness}

Dislikes {umm, everything}:

• White linoleum counter tops. I had once lived in an apartment with white linoleum counters and swore it would never happen again. Well here we were, once again, with white linoleum. Hubby promised granite - at some point- so I agreed to live with it {for 10 months too long}.
• White appliances. I used to really like white appliances, but now I preferred stainless steel.
• The big, bright fluorescent light on the ceiling. I am not a fan of overhead lights, particularly bright fluorescent ones. 
• The Pergo laminate flooring. It sounded hollow when we walked on it and it looked as if someone had ice skated over it. In other words, scratched.
• I didn't love the raised bar. I really wanted an island or large counter workspace. Plus I felt it closed off the room.
• The color. Now there's nothing wrong with yellow, I just didn't want it in my kitchen. But paint doesn't scare me. It's an easy fix.
• Two-tone, gold and white cabinet hardware and gold switch plates so shiny you could use them as mirrors. 

Need I say more?

The kitchen remodel was complete in November 2007 {about one year after moving into the house}. Let me remind you that all the renovations were done by hubby and me, with the exception of the counter tops. It was not something either of us had done before, we learned along the way. Here's what we did:

• Granite! Good-bye white linoleum, hello Santa Cecilia granite!
• Stainless appliances, all of them.
• A new, hanging light fixture. This took some work because there was a large rectangular hole in the ceiling when "Big Fluorescent" was removed. Hubby had to patch it up with drywall and spackle and then of course, paint. 
• Beautiful Teak hardwoods.
• Did you notice the raised bar is gone? Best idea EVER! After removing the laminate in prep for the granite installation {tip: HUGE money saver if you remove it yourself}, hubby cut off the drywall used for the raised bar so that it was level with the counter top. The granite covered all imperfections and is supported {because the solid slab is so heavy} with a corbel* and four stair posts.
• On the walls: we painted the walls with Ralph Lauren Tangier Island & Country Cork, added beadboard under the bar and travertine tile backsplash under the cabinets.
• We changed the cabinet hardware to nickel-finish knobs and pulls.
• Nickel finish switch plates replaced the gold.

Everything was just how I wanted it, except the cabinets. Unfortunately, new kitchen cabinets were not an option for us. If I wanted a different look, I would have to do it myself. I kept putting this project off because I knew that it would be a lot of work. Finally, on March 9, 2011, I started my kitchen cabinet transformation. {No Turning Back Now}. The dishes came out, the doors came off and I was ready to go! 

I plan on doing an in-depth tutorial on painting the cabinets, including supplies, what to do andnot to do, etc. But for now, in a nutshell, here are the steps for re-finishing the cabinets:

{you can also look at my previous posts for more details: cleaning, sanding and priming; painting and beginning construction of box; more box construction; mistakes and painting doors; antique glazing}

• Remove cabinet hardware and doors. Clean all surfaces to remove grease and grime. 
• Sand surfaces well to rough up the finish.
• Prime. 
• Lightly sand to smooth any brush strokes or drips.

• Paint 2-3 coats, allowing to dry 24 hours and lightly sanding in between coats.
• Apply and wipe off glaze to give an "antique look."

On top of the painting, we also added glass doors, replaced the cabinet above the microwave with a decorative box and shelf that touched the ceiling and changed the cabinet hardware. 

Like I said, this was by no means an easy project. Many times throughout the process I cursed and hollered that I would NEVER do this again. But now that I'm finished, I would do again in a heartbeat! I absolutely love how my new cabinets look! The room looks so much bigger and brighter and the and the accents like the antiquing, new hardware, glass doors and box with molding really bring the whole look together.

Now it's perfect! Except that I would still like a Viking range, double ovens and a Sub Zero fridgesomeday! I am so happy with all of the changes we have made. And what I love best is that we did it all ourselves and saved TONS of money!

This project was contributed by one of our fabulous readers! We love to share your projects with this great blogging community. So, if you have projects from kitchen renovation ideas to small bathroom remodels, overhauled and repurposed furniture, spray paint updates you name it please send it in! Thanks for reading Remodelaholic!