Originally posted at twentysixcats.com

I finally took pictures of the kitchen! Here are the before pictures, what it looked like when we closed on the house:

After spending a lot of time scraping wallpaper (two layers!) and painting, here is what it looks like today:

Our intention is to redo the kitchen when we get the money – new cabinets, new appliances, etc. Something that will make better use of the space without pricing ourselves out of our neighborhood. In the meantime, we wanted to make the kitchen a little pleasanter and less smelling like curry. What we did:

– Ripped down all the paneling and wallpaper which took FOREVER. They have special wallpaper removal stuff but we found that hot water worked better. There were two layers of wallpaper! We didn’t bother with the paper over the cabinets; we’ll get that whenever we redo the kitchen.
– Painted all the walls a sage green color.
– Replaced the curtains with new ones. The curtains that were there were stiff, stained, and greasy. They were probably pretty at one point, but not anymore. New curtains mad such a difference!
– The house didn’t come with a fridge so we hopped over to the Sears scratch & dent store in Tucker to buy a new one. I spent a long time debating about what color fridge to get, and I finally decided on white. (I wanted black, but I was afraid it would be too dark for the room.)
– Because of the height of the fridge, we had to take down the shelves and cabinet that were on that wall. We were going to reuse the shelves, but they fell apart in the process of taking them down. We moved the cabinet over near the sink. It looks a little funny, but it’s usable and that’s the important part.
– Added knobs to all the cabinets. Even after a heavy-duty cleaning, they were still sticky and made me want to wash my hands after touching them. So, we added knobs which not only make them look nicer but enable me to open them without getting my hands sticky. :-) I was going to replace all the drawer knobs too, but I decided against it because of our intentions to redo the kitchen.

So the kitchen is really functional now, and I think will be fine for the next few years. When we redo it, we’ll go ahead and get a new oven/stove and exhaust fan to match the fridge. We’ll also get a built-in dishwasher and extend the counter from the sink all the way to the wall. I’d also like to replace all the cabinets – my biggest complaint with these is that the shelves are rather low and so a lot of space is wasted due to not being able to stack things (like, for example, cups).

I put all the dishes out in the dining room so that we could use the cabinets for our small appliances. I think I’m happy with how it turned out, and until we have the money to redo it, I’m going to be brainstorming ideas for how to make better use of the space.