Hi all, since Houzz was so helpful to us, I thought I'd share some before/after photos of our kitchen renovation.

First, the befores. We live in a 100+ year old house that was last renovated (including the kitchen) in the 90s. It was mostly galley-style, which was pretty tight for our family to do any significant cooking in. It was also done in a "shabby chic" antiqued style that was definitely trending more toward shabby and less chic 30-ish years later.

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And the afters. In September of last year, we had an architect come over to give us some initial recommendations on what we could do with the space. He suggested moving our external basement stairs (which used to be behind the window above the table in the first photo above) to the right of our house and then using the gained space to make our kitchen a rectangle instead of an L. This was a bigger project than we'd been envisioning, but since this is our "forever home," we decided to go for it.

Demo began in early April '23 and the contractors finished last week, so late October '23. We worked with the architect, a kitchen designer and contractor throughout the project, with the three of them collaborating frequently.

The most significant delay was the new windows, which were ordered in March and didn't arrive until September. On the flipside, we got extremely lucky and the Sub-Zero fridge that we ordered in January came in August. Based on reports we saw here and elsewhere, we'd been prepared to have to move our (very) old fridge back into the space and wait a lot longer for the new one.

I'd long dreamed of having walnut cabinets on the bottom (without realizing how expensive they are, ouch!) and white on top. Fortunately my husband indulged me and I am SO happy with the outcome. Other than that, one thing I learned about myself through this process is that I'm terrible at envisioning different options in spaces, so there was a lot of purchasing things and returning them. But I think where we ended up looks and works ok.

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Happy to answer any questions if folks have them. Thanks again, Houzz!

Walnut

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