Kitchen Reno: The befores

I mentioned in my New Years Goals post that one of our financial goals is to pay cash for a kitchen update. Pretty much everything in our kitchen is original from when it was built. There's nothing wrong with it, but we would love to update it a little. It's not going to be a quick process, as we are hoping to do a lot of the work ourselves and of course we want to pay cash for it, so we are going to do thing as we have the funds to do them.

So...here are a few pictures of what the kitchen looks like now:

So there it is. Clearly I didn't clean it up when I took pictures, but this is pretty much what it looks like most of the time. We like the layout of is, so we're not doing anything too crazy. Here's a little run down of what we would like to do:

• Replace all appliances
• Paint the cabinets
• Take out the cabinets above the stove and install an over-the-range microwave
• Build a shelf to go over the microwave
• Hardware on the cabinets
• New backsplash all around
• Take out the florescent lights in the main part of the kitchen and replace them with can lights
• Take out the can lights over the island and replace them with pendants

We'd also like to get new floors, but the kitchen, hallway and family room is all the same floor so whenever we do tackle the floors it will probably be a complete redo of the flooring on our first floor, and will exceed the scope and budget of the kitchen reno. So we'll call the kitchen done once the eight items listed above are completed.

We've already gotten started, so (hopefully) I'll be back soon with an update on how things are coming.