The green monster! Really it was..

At first when I moved in, I thought it was kind of appealing and no one really had a hunter green kitchen. I worked with it, changing out the country/colonial décor as each season passed.  Then I passed on the green…. I started to get more and more annoyed by how dark it was and how ineffective this L-shaped island was with no defined area to entertain.  Also, as you can see in these first two images, the refrigerator was on the dining room wall and was directly across from the L-shape with a tall cabinet next to it. There was nowhere to stand when you open the door!

    

I always wished it was more open concept, there was only one small doorway to the dining room.  So one day I followed through and I started asking questions about this wall blocking the kitchen from the dining room.  Call in the reinforcements and get it inspected to find out it is load bearing.  Never attempt to take down a wall until you know for sure, your house is depending on you..

        

In our case we were 99% sure it was load bearing and we happen to have great family in the business.  We knew the span needed, he ordered the 2 huge lvl beams and in one day it was gone..talk about a difference a day makes!  The dining room has two windows in it, so right away I saw a big difference in the daylight streaming through, and this was at the end the day.  My excitement was growing with each step of the process.

Then comes the fun stuff.. Design & Demo Day!  We knew right away we could do all of the work ourselves, and we were very excited to get started. We planned accordingly. It was time to mix the farmhouse style I loved with the home we currently owned. I browsed a lot of kitchen books and knew I wanted light, but never white. After all, this is still a colonial and not a farmhouse.  I ultimately went for Thomasville (through a wonderful rep at Home Depot) cream color with a Toasted Almond Glaze and I drew my design for her to layout on her system. It worked!

Closing up this one window on the back of the house allowed us to move the refrigerator and also create a large pantry.

 

Demolition disaster .. we found moldy wood from an obvious prior homeowner leak, and an adhesive behind the back splash that could hold a tanker together, what were they thinking! Be gone!

Flooring – Wood all the way! I love really wide plank, but again this is a colonial so we kept it to 5″ width and went with the distressed for character. Lumber Liquidators Coventry Oak, was a great deal and we covered 800 sq ft of our home in this beauty. Unfortunately they do not carry it anymore which changed my plans for our living room floor, but our kitchen and den floor are beautiful!  Always let the hardwood acclimate to your home for about 10 days. In our case it was summer & very hot so we took our time.

  

Installing the cabinets went great, pay attention to your studs! No really, you do not want these to move, ever! So measure twice and then measure again before you mark and screw in that first piece. Once it goes it well, everything else will line in correctly. It was a dream of mine to have a huge island, so I bought 3 lower base cabinets and bolted them together.

Granite, don’t let anyone ever tell you “granite is no big deal” like a house inspector told me. He was an @** and let me tell you our granite counter tops are amazing! Shivakashi comes in several colors, mine has veins of copper and red which are stunning in every season!