mini house mighty hearts: kitchen makeover

Our first DIY of the new house HAD to be the kitchen. It was a total cave! Words can't even describe how funky it felt to be in the original - when we first went to look at the house, I didn't even really walk into it. I had no idea what the sink looked like or anything else. I just sort of glanced over in the general direction and decided that I wouldn't enter the black hole that was where one would prepare food. I had to look at the listing online to remind myself what the heck the thing looked like! All I could remember was feeling hellish while in it's presence. Anyhoo, I can wholeheartedly say that tackling this thing head on was the right move - it was so mentally and physically exhausting to get done, we would have been miserable if we tried to do it after moving in.

Our escrow was insanely short - just three weeks! It was supposed to be 30 days, but everything went so smoothly, there was no reason not to just hand over the keys. So on October 2nd Chad got word that we would be closing the next day. That night, he came home and told me that we were in fact going to close early, so let's go to Home Depot "right now," get some paint and start working on the kitchen starting "tomorrow." WHAT? I sort of freaked out that we would be moving WAY sooner than expected - forget about redoing a darn kitchen! That was too much for my brain to handle. But after a night of misdirecting my anxious feelings towards Chad in a not-so-nice way, I felt refreshed and ready to go! Thankfully, we waited until the 3rd (the official day escrow closed) to go to Home Depot, then headed over to the house with two car-fulls on the 4th to start unscrewing the cabinets.

EVERY.SINGLE.DAY we went to the house with carloads. Chad would load his car the night before, then leave for work the next morning at 6:00 am, then go to the house after work where he would find me unloading my car into the garage with the two kids running around. Then the two of us would stay there until 9:30 or 10:00 at night sanding, priming, painting, painting, painting, painting... then finally screwing the whole thing back together again! The total project took from October 4th - October 12th (move in day!).

The kids were such freakin' troopers. I know everybody says that about their kids in the face of adversity, but ours really freakin' were. The whole length of the project, there was no couch, no bed, no TV, no NOTHING for children to do for hours on end. On top of that, the whole thing was dirty. Really, REALLY dirty - the carpets were practically black, the tile had a light dusting of grease or something gross and the walls were sandy to the touch. Oh yeah, and the backyard was filled with dead, pokey weeds. It was insane! Thank goodness for good friends and family coming out with us a few days to play with them! Also, thank goodness for siblings who are little buddies. It was great! Exhausting, but great!

OUR PROCESS:

1. First we unscrewed every...single...darn...screw. And then had to be very diligent about storing those hinge pieces. Hardware too! Ziplock little baggies were EVERYTHING.

2.Then we sanded each and every inch of all of the unscrewed cabinet doors and kitchen frame - alleluia for that automatic sander, but sheesh that was a bear to complete. We had to be extremely meticulous, especially with the detailed grooves in each cabinet door. Wah! I was unaware of this product, but had I known, you betchya bottom dollar I would have used it! To just swipe over liquid and successfully take off the varnish??!!! Bah!

3. Next we primed EVERY INCH of the wood we had just stripped.

4. Then we proceeded to layer on 4 coats of semi-gloss Premium Plus Ultra Pure White. This particular color was just found straight up on the Home Depot shelves. There was no mixing involved - I just saw on "Pure White" and picked it up! So it's a sort of "stock" item in the Depot? I have no idea how you would categorize it, but it was easy to go pick up more gallons of it as needed.

5. Next we let that THOROUGHLY dry over several days (it was lucky for us that we hadn't moved in yet. Could you IMAGINE?).

6. FINALLY it was time to screw all of the hinges back into their homes and get that hardware in there! It was the best moment of our entire lives. Besides the birth of our children. And our wedding day. Okay.

Total cost? Around $80! Not so bad for a total transformation! We already had the screwdrivers, cabinet hardware (from the previous owners) and sander. Pret-ty stoked about that low price tag. :)