Here is another before and after from our old condo. Again, I know it’s not really a current project, but I just never got around to documenting the transformation.

We were very proud of how this kitchen turned out, even though finances prevented us from doing everything we had wanted to do. We had hoped to also replace the counter top, appliances, and sink, but we decided that the other areas of the kitchen were more important.

So, here is the beautiful “before” photo, taken the day we signed the mortgage.

Yeah, it looks like an old apartment from the seventies…because that’s what it is. They became “condos” when the owner sold the apartments off to the tenants. We were purchasing a unit that had never been owner-occupied, and it showed.

Let’s go through the entire transformation one thing at a time (because you have, by now, come to expect more than just a quick read from me…at least I hope you have).

First we have the floor. I don’t think the before shows you how nasty this floor was. There were years and years of food and stains on this cheap vinyl. There were even a few rips in it. Totally yucky. We bought some of those adhesive backed floor tiles from Lowe’s, and we were able to install them ourselves. Kyla and I measured and marked them, then I cut them with a utility knife, and he laid them out. It was obviously an amateur job if you looked close at the corners, but it looked really good overall. Since the kitchen was so small, it only took two packages of the flooring. I think it cost around $70 total, but, as you’ll soon see, it made a world of difference for that room.

The walls had this icky grayish, textured wallpaper that I can only assume was original, since I don’t remember layers and layers of wallpaper like we found in the guest bath. It took forever to get that stuff off, and then we found that the walls were in terrible shape, so we did a lot of puttying and spackeling. We decided to use Sherwin Williams Craft Paper paint color on the walls, and I think it ended up looking better than I had pictured it. The photo doesn’t quite do it justice…it was gorgeous.

We also decided to add crown moulding and trim moulding where the cabinets met the walls. We didn’t think we could do this part ourselves (primarily because neither of us had ever really used a saw), so we splurged and hired a carpenter. He was a guy who did carpentry on the side, and we found him through a friend. We paid around $500 to have all of the moulding purchased and put up in the kitchen, dining room and living room. I think it was totally worth it, because it really made the rooms look finished (and it hid our inability to not get paint on that stupid popcorn ceiling).

Now, this is the part that I think made the biggest impact for the least amount of money…the cabinets. We didn’t even really consider getting new cabinets since we didn’t plan to stay in the condo for more than a few years, so we knew we had to paint them. White was the obvious choice, being that we needed a way to make the kitchen look not-quite-so-itty-bitty. The cabinets were solid wood, but the doors were just plywood with laminate wood grain facing, so I didn’t feel too terrible about painting them. Plus, a previous tenant has apparently had a small fire on the countertop, and the bottom of one whole cabinet was scorched, which would require lots of paint to cover, even after hours of scrubbing.

We bought new hardware in really dark oil-rubbed bronze. The contrast with the white cabinets looked fantastic. There was a bit of discussion about the dark hinges being too much contrast, but Kyla won, and my white hinges had to be returned. I’m glad we went with his idea, though.

And on to the sink. Ahhh, the sink area. Where do I begin?

Kyla insisted on having a better faucet. No, more like DEMANDED. That old faucet was pretty terrible. So we got a new faucet with a sprayer and a taller nozzle, and he was happy. I can’t remember what we paid for this, but I’m sure it was in the more affordable range.

We had hoped to do a backsplash across the entire wall (between the countertop and top cabinets), but that never worked out to be financially possible. So, we got creative. We got a different pattern of that same adhesive backed laminate tile we used on the floor, and put six pieces straight onto the wall. I caulked it really well to fill in the seems, and we had that carpenter guy put some trim moulding around it, to make a frame and keep it in place. Then, we had my father cut a piece of wood and glue it up under the little cabinets above the sink, to visually lower the cabinet and make it hide the top of the makeshift backsplash. I added some of those battery powered touch lights up under there so you could illuminate the sink. It was awesome!

Even though we weren’t able to replace the actual sink, I think the improvements we were able to make helped the kitchen look so much classier.

Oh, and please, for the love of God, validate Kyla Brown’s obsession with white switch plates and outlet covers by noticing how much better they look than the old apartment-style almond covers. This was a top priority, ya’ll. And it killed him that we were never able to replace the actual switches and outlets with white ones…he would look at that mismatch of almond and white and cringe.

Here, you can see the flooring in action. You’ll also see the old, plastic thing that was posing as shoe moulding on the left, and the new, solid wood painted white shoe moulding on the right. This is another thing we had the carpenter guy do. Even though it’s not something people notice when it’s done, you really notice when it’s not there.

And here’s a shot of the new heat register. It wasn’t anything fancy…maybe $10 bucks tops, but the old one was warped and rusted. Details, people, details!

Here are a few more shots, not quite so zoomed in, so you can compare the before and afters.

You see those Chic-Fil-A cups? We stopped there on our way into town that morning, after leaving at the butt crack of dawn to drive 3 hours to our new home. We had been married for three weeks. We went to the condo, met up with The In-Laws, looked around, took these pictures, and went to the lawyer’s office to sign the paperwork. This was the morning that we became homeowners. We had seen the condo for the first time just one measly month prior to signing these papers, and this was only our second time ever setting foot in the place.

Not sure why the Chic-Fil-A cups required that information, but it just made me nostalgic, you know? We were newly married, buying our first place, and didn’t realize that our lives were about to change completely. Damn I’m a softie…those Chic-Fil-A cups are about to make me cry!

And the final, total transformation. Yeah, I know…we’re awesome. And our family and friends are awesome, because many of them assisted us in various stages of this kitchen re-do.

And one more slightly bigger shot of the “After.”

Everything we did in this room combined cost less than $1000, including paint, materials, and the fraction of the cost of the carpenter that was appropriate to work he did in the kitchen. That even includes the three tubes of caulk that I wasted trying to figure out how to make it look pretty.