Hi, I'm Kara.
Nice to meet you!
Welcome! If you're looking for a place to be inspired, encouraged, and giggle a tiny bit, you're in the right place!
I'm pulling out the big guns already, guys. I’m going to tell you about the biggest and best remodel in our house – our kitchen. Remodeling our kitchen has CHANGED me. I, Kara, now like to cook!! It’s a miracle.
You see, in our first house, the kitchen was itsy-bitsy and a little bit ugly-bugly. 😉 Although we dreamed of re-doing it for the eight years we lived there, we put our time and effort into other areas of the house. Once we started looking for a new house, we knew we wanted to prioritize having a nice big kitchen since we hadn’t had that before.
We instantly fell in love with our current house when we saw it, despite the kitchen not being quite as functional as we would have liked. We were committed, however, to making some changes to achieve the kitchen we dreamed of – but it would have to be on a budget, of course.
This is the kitchen before we moved in – it was nice! The cabinets were fairly new and were even the “shaker” style we liked.
The layout on the other hand was a bit wonky. The closet with double doors (below) is oh, ya know, just the WASHER and DRYER!?? Weird, yes? The island was also in a bit of an awkward place that didn’t utilize the space well.
SO, we moved the washer and dryer to the perfect little area in our basement, and knocked out that area altogether. Bye bye closet and small pantry and HELLO space for a giant island!
We worked with an amazing contractor and cabinet lady who helped make our dreams come true for this space. It was SO FUN to plan everything and pick out all the details.
I’ll just show you a series of before and afters, cause who doesn’t love that?! HERE WE GO! 🙂
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We were able to keep the existing cabinets and painted them white, which saved a ton of money.
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My favorite “feature” that we added was this brick entryway from the dining room into the kitchen. It went from a small pocket door to THIS. Dream come true. Literally – I’ve dreamt of a brick archway to put SOMEwhere for years! And it truly wasn’t too much extra to add this, so it never hurts to ask or look into. You won’t regret it!
We didn’t get new appliances right away to spread out the cost and we wanted to use the old appliances as long as possible, but then we got THESE bad boys earlier this year. They are called Café Matte White – a GE line – and I’m in love with them. One of my good friends, who also shares my love for this line, said, and I quote: “I love those appliances like I love my own children.” bahahahahaha. But I SO agree. 😉
And in true Kara-fashion, I had the new shelving around the window and other spaces decorated BEFORE the project was fully complete. I just COULDN’T wait, and we’ve been loving it ever since.
I hope you enjoyed seeing this space transformed. It was so much fun to see it come to life. Now WHO wants to come over for dinner?! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Huge hugs! XO!
~ Kara
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Thanks for stopping by this happy little corner of the internet.
@ kara_vandyke
