Before & After: From Cramped Galley to Spacious Kitchen
Hi all, since Houzz was so helpful to us, I thought I'd share some before/after photos of our kitchen renovation.
First, the befores. We live in a 100+ year old house that was last renovated (including the kitchen) in the 90s. It was mostly galley-style, which was pretty tight for our family to do any significant cooking in. It was also done in a "shabby chic" antiqued style that was definitely trending more toward shabby and less chic 30-ish years later.
And the afters. In September of last year, we had an architect come over to give us some initial recommendations on what we could do with the space. He suggested moving our external basement stairs (which used to be behind the window above the table in the first photo above) to the right of our house and then using the gained space to make our kitchen a rectangle instead of an L. This was a bigger project than we'd been envisioning, but since this is our "forever home," we decided to go for it.
Demo began in early April '23 and the contractors finished last week, so late October '23. We worked with the architect, a kitchen designer and contractor throughout the project, with the three of them collaborating frequently.
The most significant delay was the new windows, which were ordered in March and didn't arrive until September. On the flipside, we got extremely lucky and the Sub-Zero fridge that we ordered in January came in August. Based on reports we saw here and elsewhere, we'd been prepared to have to move our (very) old fridge back into the space and wait a lot longer for the new one.
I'd long dreamed of having walnut cabinets on the bottom (without realizing how expensive they are, ouch!) and white on top. Fortunately my husband indulged me and I am SO happy with the outcome. Other than that, one thing I learned about myself through this process is that I'm terrible at envisioning different options in spaces, so there was a lot of purchasing things and returning them. But I think where we ended up looks and works ok.
Happy to answer any questions if folks have them. Thanks again, Houzz!
Comments (33)
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lisa_in_md
6 months agoThanks all! @sarahsaccount24, here you go.
@blfenton, I guess it is! I hadn't heard it referred to it as a free-floating peninsula before, but I googled and apparently yes. Ha. As you can see in the layout above, there's a powder room right there, so we had to separate it from the rest of the countertop. It's been working really great for us so far, thanks to thoughtful choices by our architect and designer - e.g. room for the fridge door to open fully, pull out shelves in the cabinet that's closest to the wall, etc.
lisa_in_md
6 months agolisa_in_md
6 months agoThanks so much for the kind comments, all!
@arcy_gw, yep, although it was 1999. You inspired me to go look at the past permit documents that we have. In terms of sticking with the two-tone, I always liked it in the old kitchen and it also seemed like white was the best color to go with for the uppers since they go up to the ceiling and we didn't want them to feel too "heavy." In terms of the basement stair moving, our basement is unfinished so it's actually not vey interesting from an interior perspective. But outside, we got a lovely set of new stairs that are MUCH safer than the old ones.
@Lisa, thanks! Yes, the undercabinet lighting's tone can be changed very easily. I tend to like the cool light even though it doesn't "match" because it makes the color of the backsplash show up truer in photos. Warm light makes it look gray, when in reality it's more of a gray-ish green.
@Jan Moyer, thanks so much. We definitely were planning on just sticking the old one in there, which would have been a bummer but I'm far too lazy to walk that far every time I need something from the fridge. Wow - hope it was worth it once she got the new fridge!
@KW PNW Z8, thanks! The dog bowls were planned. At first we were going to get one where they were truly built in, but then realized that it was a better idea to keep it a bit more flexible. The shelf is covered with a piece of silicone mat that I cut to fit. It's worked pretty well so far.
@Sally T, thanks! Here are photos of the inside of the pantry (well, at least the two bottom sections - I'm too lazy to pull out the step ladder to open the tops). This is still a work in progress, but so far we have food on the left (in pull out drawers mostly) and appliance and home good storage on the right. They're pretty deep - hard to see but on the right side there's one shelf that has a stand mixer in the back and Vitamix comfortably in front of it.
lisa_in_md
6 months ago
Kendrah