Renovating kitchen on a Budget

Did I ever tell you why the kitchen reveal took so long?? When we took the bathroom floor up and looked underneath the cottage we discovered that the cottage’s sewer line was collapsed – so we had to get an entire new sewer line all the way to the street. And that costs thousands of dollars. It actually took my entire kitchen remodel budget and so I had to save that up again entirely. And that is why the kitchen was finished so much later than the main part of the house.

But it finally has been finished – and I am excited to share the details with you! As a very small space – the #1905Cottage has been really fun to work on. The kitchen is the biggest room in the house. But it still had it’s issues. When we bought the house the kitchen had a dropped down, grid ceiling, dropped doorways and an awkward design. So we came in and ripped it all apart to see what the bones of the room was. We discovered a hidden doorway, a much higher ceiling and doors and the last remaining original window in the house. Plus TONS of really cool wallpaper designs that had been used in the home over the past 100 years. Here’s what it looked like before:

And then here’s what it looked like during: I knew I wanted to keep the room light and bright with white paint and white cabinets. I also decided to use hexagonal tile on the backsplash and take the backsplash all the way to the ceiling. Instead of upper cabinets on the main wall, I designed floating open shelves.

And on the other main walls I designed built-in cabinets for storage. And to keep with the history of the home, I decided to put in seeded glass in the storage cabinets in the kitchen.

I also spent the whole summer two summers ago sanding down the original hardwood floors in the #1905Cottage kitchen. I rented three different sanders to get the many layers of old linoleum and glue up off the floors. I know in the end that all of that effort was worth it. Now I look at those floors and I love seeing the character.

And another cool thing to know is that all of the original floors in the home are straight, pieces of pine without breaks. And that is hard to find now. So the ones in the kitchen are lengths of pine that are 20 feet in length.

For the island of the kitchen I wanted something that could be moved, just in case the space ever needed to be used for something different. So when I came across a discount Williams Sonoma island at our discount store DownEast Basics, I loved the marble top. And then I found out that it was discounted from $5, 000 to $1, 000 and then an additional 20% off – I knew it was perfect! My father-in-law built a shelf to go at the top of the island. I am hoping to find some baskets and keep kitchen basics inside.

For the knobs of the kitchen I fell in love with some pretty knobs from Threshold at Target. They have scalloped details that are so pretty!

We also planked the ceiling and I think it gives the room more character, and it also looks like it could have been done 100 years ago.

I spray painted a brass chandelier Sun Yellow and I love the POP of color the chandelier gives the room.

The cabinets are custom made. I was going to put in Ikea cabinets, but these custom cabinets only cost about 10% more and it saved us time in assembly. Plus I could design custom cabinets, like the wall of cabinets that camouflage an old flue in the home.

We brought up the doorways and arched them. And in the bathroom and bedroom we didn’t want to cover the original old doorways up, so we made DIY transoms for those rooms.

I just love this room. It really is the center of the cottage. And now that it is so bright and pretty, it’s really a space that I love and it makes the whole cottage happy and joyful!

Now this space is so light and bright. It’s been a joy to work on. I can’t wait for the next phase of this little house!