Here’s the kitchen’s current state. At some point, I’ll finish painting the ceiling and give the wall a color and the cabinets a second coat of cabinet paint.
Idk what to say about this house other than it really needed some love and attention. Here’s a pretty solid before photo of the kitchen. A wall divided the kitchen from the dining room and there was a sofit and nonfunctional pressboard cabinets, peeling wallpaper, linoleum.
Almost everything in the renovation was free, scratch and dent, secondhand. I had a very small renovation budget, which went to electrical and countertops. I financed the scratch and dent appliances and lvp (more like vp) flooring, and SLOWLY diy’d the rest (with help from friends) as the budget allowed.
I think the hardest part was stripping the linoleum glue. Scraping and scraping for days. At some point, my hand gave out, I dropped the open container of floor stripper, it bounced back up, I got floor stripper in my eye and had a full eyeball burn. I water flushed for 15 minutes and it eventually healed. I got lucky I think. Wore goggles after that. Safety third, apparently.
The oak box cabinets were free from an old neighbor’s kitchen demo. I measured and mapped and came up with a configuration that was a pretty good retrofit. It looks nothing like their old kitchen, but it’s fully functional and the cabinets are sturdy and a coat of cabinet paint definitely gave them new life.
The black shelf brackets are all over my house. A friend ordered the wrong size for a project. Couldn’t return, and gave me a huge pile of them. I thought about painting them, but decided to roll with the black.
The butcher block shelves are leftover pieces from a desk project in my office. I whitewashed them, because I had leftover whitewash sealer, but I think they look cool.
This post is in progress. I will update whenever I get a minute.