One of my Favorite Rooms

I LOVE our new kitchen. This was the room that had the biggest transformation and a huge pay off but was relatively simple to change (minus the wallpaper removal which has already been dicussed).

Here is how we saw the kitchen when we were thinking(for 2 seconds) about buying this house. It was updated with new appliances, cabinets, wallpaper, and counter tops in the 70's and remained very unchanged. As one of our neighbors said "She had it cherried out". In the era, this was a very stylish kitchen. A few lovely highlights are the faux marble counters and the almond appliances. Why do they even make almond color anything?

As you can see we changed almost everything in this kitchen. I am absolutely ecstatic about how it all turned out.

This is my favorite view of my kitchen because you can look through the dining room and into the front room. (You can see my Valentine's decorations hanging in the dining room). And, yes, our kitchen design was very inspired from the amazing kitchen on Dexter.

Although very out-dated everything was in really great condition. We kept the cabinets and repainted them white which I love. We added new hard ware, new lights, refinished the countertops, and put in our fabulous new backslpash (thanks to one handy husband and some cool tile products) and presto!

Here is the view looking in from the dining room. We added this inexpensive move-able island and it completely changes the functionality of the room. We can now feed Olive at the little bar area and have tons of cooking prep space. This was probably the best investment because of its daily use.

This is basically the same view as the "before" picture. Quite the difference right? I would tell you about all the amazing deals that we got on our various appliances, but I won't bore you with those details.

I wanted to include a close up of the backsplash. The glass tile looks so stunning next to the black countertops and gray walls. To add a "pop of color" as the design show say, we chose red accents in the rug, dishtowels, and obviously KitchenAid.

The previous owner used this spot as an eat in area with a table. I really wanted to be able to have a "family desk" area with computer and this space worked perfectly. Also notice the wall of pantry space, including a broom closet and a recipe book file storage compartment type area. Are you in love yet? I sure am!