It’s finally here!! Our very first in the before & after series from our new house!!

So the fun thing about our new house is that it’s a three story colonial that used to be a two-family. Which means we actually have TWO kitchens to decorate. We’re going to be using the first floor as our studio, so the first floor kitchen is really just a studio kitchen that we’ll use for making lunch and getting ready for client meetings. It’s also actually quite a good sized kitchen so we’ll be setting up some work stations in there for tissue paper, ribbons, boxes, etc (more on that to come!) But because the second floor kitchen is really where we’re going to do most of our living, we wanted to save as much of the budget for that one as we possibly could for things like nicer cabinets, appliances, and so on. So for this kitchen, we wanted to try to work with what we had and be creative as much as possible.

Here is the before.

And HERE is the after!!!!

The biggest changes you can see in there are our hard wood floors, which we had put throughout the house, and the new ceilings with recessed lighting. That was all part of the renovation we had to do throughout the house because of the leak that was there before we bought it (and why we were able to buy it in the first place!) We saved the original hardwoods where we could and had them all stained the same color (Ebony from Minwax), but as you can see above the kitchens just had awful, cheap tile. So those are all new hardwoods and we are totally psyched with how they turned out!

Since we’re going to be investing a chunk of change in the cabinets we put upstairs, we didn’t want to spend anymore on the cabinets for downstairs. So one night Justin gets it in his head to start sanding what was already there, and a couple of coats of white paint later we have these. HUGE improvement I would say!

The next major change we did in there was the countertops, which were originally those terrible cheap laminate ones you see above. Besides being cheap they were also FILTHY. So they had to go. At first we were just going to get another cheap one at Home Depot, but then we decided to check out Ikea. They had these butcher block countertops for $125. One slab was plenty, and our contractors cut them to fit the space. Before that, Justin also sanded them down and stained them to match the floors. Total cost: about $140.

As you see below, we did do some upgrading on the appliances with the stove & microwave. We got those pretty cheap at Home Depot and then we checked online from our iPhones and found out they were selling them there even cheaper there so the store had to match. We ended up saving $150 dollars on an already pretty cheap set (price wise, we’ve actually found them to be pretty awesome quality wise. So if you’re looking for a good set, check them out!). Stove & microwave together were about $750. We will also be doing a new refrigerator and the finishing trim (baseboards, quarter round) pretty soon….as soon as we save up some more cash!

We kept the original sink from the house (which I LOVE), but replaced the faucets with this cool barn style set from Delta. Those were about $150.

Another good shot of the countertops.

And finally we finished everything off with brushed nickel plates to go with our paint color (Gravel from Restoration Hardware). The copper plated switch covers from the earlier post are going in our meeting room. But you’re going to have to wait on that! :)

Happy HGTV Monday everyone!!