Help me redesign my kitchen...

[Gempress]

Kitchen remodel? Actually, we're just finishing up ours! And I completely relate to your issues. We had a terrible, mostly white kitchen (lightly accented with urine yellow and avocado green) from the 1940s/50s. It looks amazing now, and we went with a lot of natural wood. I'll get some pictures! *scuttles off to get the camera*

[Gempress]

Originally Posted by CaliTerp07

It's so WHITE. My dream kitchen has dark cherry cabinets, but the cabinets we have are actually in really good shape, and have awesome built in sliding drawers and such. So, I think we'll keep those to save money. Obviously we'll replace the awful white doors with matching honey colored wood.

You can keep the cabinets without having to keep the honey color. Just sand them down and stain the original wood to a dark cherry. Same with the sliding doors, which I agree are awesome. If they're made of solid wood, you can strip the paint off and stain them.

[CaliTerp07]

Originally Posted by Gempress

You can keep the cabinets without having to keep the honey color. Just sand them down and stain the original wood to a dark cherry. Same with the sliding doors, which I agree are awesome. If they're made of solid wood, you can strip the paint off and stain them.

Yeah, I'm currently researching how to do that. It's definitely really tempting! They're a high quality cabinet from what I can tell, just really...outdated.

My problem is I have absolutely zero desire to do any of this myself. I've watched friends build/stain/paint wall units, retile floors and remodel bathrooms themselves, and have no desire to embark on such a journey myself. Thus, I need to budget for someone else to get their hands dirty for me

[Romy]

Originally Posted by Gempress

You can keep the cabinets without having to keep the honey color. Just sand them down and stain the original wood to a dark cherry. Same with the sliding doors, which I agree are awesome. If they're made of solid wood, you can strip the paint off and stain them.

This! You can totally change the look of them.

My old boss had a gorgeous kitchen remodel done. They had dark red alder cabinets, stainless steel appliances, and slate floor. The counter was black soapstone which was way soft and got chipped easily. Black granite would look awesome though.

It was similar to this look, only with black counters and the walls were a terracotta color.

[Gempress]

Here's my kitchen pics! Both the lighting and my camera are terrible, but bear with me.

Here's the kitchen when we first bought the house (also complete with the seller's decor, LOL). It was TERRIBLE. Everything dated from anywhere from the 40s to the 60s. No cabinet-level outlets. The upper cabinets were too close to the bottom cabinets, so you had difficulties fitting some appliances on the counters. No dishwasher. The lighting consisted of two bare flourescent bulbs, and the one above the sink was turned on and off via a pull chain. White or off-white everywhere, six different layers of lead paint on the cabinets, and the countertops and backsplash were a cream color lightly speckled with urine yellow and avocado green. The floor was cracking old sheet vinyl, also white speckled with urine yellow. *barf*





Here's my kitchen now! We literally gutted it all the way down to nothing and started over. I think the floor is my favorite part. Beneath that terrible vinyl was gorgeous 70-year-old hardwood oak floors. We sanded off all the glue and tar....took us nearly 18 hours of work...and refinished them.

We still have a few small details to complete, mainly the outlet covers and the cabinet handles, but we're just about done. The pictures really do not do it justice. The cabinets are walnut brown, a bit darker than they appear in the photos.

[Doberluv]

I didn't remodel. This is what my new house came with. It's a poor picture. It's not really this dark in the room... The cabinets are pretty accurate though. They're maple and a reddish brown color. The granite is browish speckled and you can't see it, but there's a dark, hardwood (maple again)floor with the distressed look to it...a tad rustic. I love the wider planks and the distressed look. So, I lucked out finding a house already done with a design/style I like. Often people have to remodel to get what they like. But it's good. You can make it exactly what you have in mind. The only thing is with my granite which is not perfect is that it's granite tile (cheaper to build) instead of slab. But the grout line between is extremely thin, so it's not a problem like grout usually is. If I were building a house or remodeling...and I could afford it, I'd probably go with slab, but it is significantly more expensive.



I like the white cabinet look too...both. It would be hard for me to decide if I were remodeling. But this is how my new construction house came, I like it...it's warm and pretty and looks like furniture. And since it's all open to the family room area, it kind of transitions nicely.

Good luck choosing. That's the hard part.