The Kitchen: Before

I had a love-hate relationship with my kitchen in my last house. We only had a month between the time we purchased the home and when we needed to get stuff ordered so the pressure was on. Like I have mentioned before, I had very little decorating experience at this point and was basically clueless. If I could go back and tell myself one thing, it would be to research. Spend hours looking at online photos or magazines of that specific room. You'll start seeing a pattern develop. Similar wall colors in your pictures, light versus dark cabinets, or lots of wood versus an all white room. You'll eventually get a feel for what you like and don't like. Then from there start planning out your room based on your favorites.

It wasn't until about 6 months after the kitchen was finished that I started realizing what I did and did not like. It was a great learning experience though and I'm glad I had the opportunity to completely renovate this room.

Let's start at the beginning. The before kitchen had red carpet, outdated cabinets, a yellow countertop and did not scream "cook in here" to me.

We live in a small town so our choices were limited with kitchen design companies. We also had limited time to make our decisions and lived 2 hours away. So we decided to work with Lowe's because we could use the one closest to us at the time and wouldn't have to drive 2 hours every time we needed to talk to them.

One of the things I realized post-renovation was that we could have changed the layout in the kitchen. It had never even crossed my mind before nor did the sales associate anyone else suggest it. It's ok, I spent the next 2 years coming up with my own changes in my head and then telling my husband what we should have done. I'm sure he appreciated me agonizing over it for that long.

If you take anything away from this post, please please please take your time with big investments like this. If you are planning a huge remodel, be patient. Really know what you want before you jump in with both feet.

My husband and cousin did the demo part to save us some money. We actually ended up reusing some of the cabinets and countertop in our basement for storage. We also took this time to do some electrical and drywall work. We added a water line for our fridge as well. So many things to think about!

Tomorrow I'll show you the after pictures and give some more tips that will maybe help your future renovations!