Kitchen Progress

As I posted before, the kitchen has transformed a lot and it's not done yet. Thne problem with buying an old farmhouse is that you can only do so much without tearing out walls (if that's even possible). We are not able to expand our kitchen any direction without some MAJOR exterior work so we needed to make do with what we had. Another problem is old farmhouses have small kitchens. I'm not sure if that was because it wasn't the hub of a house like it is now or what. Kitchens in new houses are enormous!

As much as I would love a big, open kitchen...that's not going to happen. Instead we are modernizing while trying to keep as much of the original material as possible. My guess is that this kitchen was custom done back in the 60s? And I mean custom. The cupboards fit perfectly wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling. They even matched the old appliances.

The oven/broiler/rotisserie thingy was shorter than normal counters so the original counter top was shorter on that side of the kitchen. Notice how the cupboards fit perfect around it on all sides!

The sink & dishwasher were also one large unit.

These photos are from the day after we got possession. On to what you really want to see...



Everything started by taking out the appliances. I wasn't there but was told that the oven was incredibly heavy. It took 4 people to move outside from what I understand. Dave has been playing carpenter to raise the cupboard to be normal height.

If you look at the previous picture of this side, you see there used to be a window here. At one point in time this used to be an exterior wall and the previous owner enclosed the front porch to use for storage and laundry. No need to look out a window at the washer and dryer!

I posted previously that there were 4 layers of flooring in the kitchen. Here it is down to the original hardwood. You can also see the pretty paneling has been taken off. Underneath was the original plaster walls and the bottom half is plaster that was made to look like subway tile.

The original hardwood floor was going to be pretty difficult to bring back to its original glory. There was a lot of gunk as well as a couple spots where there was just padding...maybe where there were cupboards originally? We decided to go with bamboo flooring. 

There's primer on the walls!

Best for last. Here is my pretty sink! This is my splurge for the house. I was determined to have a farmhouse sink because it's a farmhouse. Duh. After looking around the home improvement sites I fell in love with the hammered copper. Normally out of our price range but we found a great sale! It's going to be so pretty. I've tried to make the sink the primary focus of the kitchen.

Sorry about the blurriness but my phone takes horrible pictures. The plan is to put shelves of some sort above the sink to house my copper teapots.