Featured Project: Kitchen Renovation

Now how is this for a honey-do list? My sister-in-law, Kelly, told her husband that she wanted a bigger kitchen. And lucky her, he didn't just nod his head and mumble something along the lines of "sure, honey!" He headed to Home Depot, grabbed the stuff he needed, knocked down a few walls, and built Kelly her big kitchen! Okay, so maybe it wasn't that simple... here are a few words from my brother-in-law, Nate, to tell us the real low-down on their kitchen renovation.

Our kitchen was a small rectangle crammed between our dining room and the garage. It was a very small space with limited storage and felt dark and cramped due to a dingy stained pine floor and stained pine cabinets.

We decided to push our entry door from the garage out into the garage about 3 feet to open the space and make the kitchen into an “L” shape and use the new space to build a pantry. The biggest hiccup in the plan was the fact that the wall we moved was load bearing. I didn’t want to have a header protruding into the kitchen since I felt that would reduce the impact of opening the room. I decided to solve this problem by putting a post on either site of the new opening, installing a double lam beam above the ceiling by cutting out the ceiling joists, the reattaching them with joist hangers to the new beam. After this was done, I removed the wall from underneath the new beam and the ceiling did not fall!

We also added a side panel at the refrigerator to allow us to pull the upper cabinet over the fridge out to the front of it for better access and giving that elevation better definition.

After the pantry was built, the cabinets were modified, the ceiling was re-supported, and the flooring was installed, we painted the cabinets and doors and installed the new pulls to complete the renovation, giving the kitchen a more open and modern look and feel.

Are you ready for this? Here are the amazing after pictures.

Didn't they do a great job?! Nate reported that the entire project cost about $2,300. Annnnnnd he told me (okay, that's a white lie- I'm simply hoping and praying!!) that he wants to come work on our upcoming bathroom renovations! :) We're lucky to have such talented family!