DIY Kitchen Remodel: From 80’s Ranch to Farmhouse Fresh

Our budget-conscience DIY kitchen remodel took our space from dated 80s ranch to farmhouse style with wood counters, beadboard, and glass doors.

I’m over-the-moon-excited to tell you we are finally done with our kitchen remodel and it’s time for the reveal! Oh, and that we’re not living with this anymore. Can the do-it-yourself sigh of relief be heard around the world, do you think?

To give a brief recap, we started with a dated 1982 ranch house kitchen that had good bones and quality cabinets. Along with disgusting harvest gold tile, wagon-wheel light fixture, and dark wood everything. Doing it ourselves, we started with painting all the cabinets and changing out the light fixtures when we repainted the great room and rest of the house.

Then we took on smaller projects as we had time and finances. We removed some upper cabinet door centers and had them replaced with glass. We retrofitted the cabinet above the stove to hold a microwave and save precious counter space. We replaced every hinge and knob (in the whole house, too!). I created a vintage-looking mercury glass pendant.

And then we started on the final stretch: repainting all the cabinets (it had been a few years since the first painting, a-hem), installing a new countertop, sink, faucet, and remaking an area I call the butler’s pantry.

Are you ready? Here’s the kitchen in all her new glory:

I’m in love with everything: the counters, of course, but also the new beadboard backsplash, huge single sink, and farmhouse faucet.

Brian said the other day that it’s like being in somebody else’s kitchen, because our kitchen has a broken faucet, chipping, uneven & ugly tile counters, holes in the cabinetry and a stove that doesn’t fit. Ha! But we are SO glad that it doesn’t exist anymore – it’s fun to be in this kitchen.

Oh, on a side note, isn’t it amazing how tan the “white” color we painted originally (now only on the walls and ceiling) seems agains the cabinets?

DIY Kitchen Remodel

Just to see how far we’ve come in eight years, here’s our one photo of what the kitchen looked like when we bought the house (note to self: take more before pictures!).

Before:

Can you say brown? I seriously can’t believe we don’t have a picture from inside the kitchen – we really did run around taking before pictures after we moved in while we were getting ready to spray everything white. Grrr, well at least it’s enough to give you an idea of what it looked like.

And here it is today:

It’s like a breath of fresh air, right?

Of course, we never lived in any of the house like we found it. We removed wallpaper and painted everything the first week we owned the house and then we did these big-impact-low-cost updating projects to get us through until the full remodel:

• Changed every.single.hinge from “antique” brass to silver.
• Changed the small white ceramic knobs to more substantial silver bin pulls and glass knobs.
• Converted the recessed light over the sink to a pendant and added a vintage fixture we bought on ebay.
• Installed a vintage (ebay, again) main light fixture.
• Removed the inset panels from 6 upper cabinet doors: one on each side of the sink and on the “butler’s pantry” wall.
• Removed the sink cabinet doors and added a curtain plus a towel rod.
• Bought a new stainless refrigerator (there was no fridge) and then replaced the dishwasher after it broke around year four.

So, it was livable and even pleasant for awhile. Until more things started breaking. And the counters got even more grody, if that’s possible. Just take a look at these before-and-after photos and you will see why we are loving our new space:

Look at that long expanse of counters…sigh. And the new sink and faucet are wonderful! I sewed a new sink skirt out of black and cream ticking to tie in with all the other black. Plus, it’s pretty classic, so I don’t think I’ll get tired of it soon.

This remodel started more than a year ago with the installation of the overhead microwave which included retrofitting the cabinet above the stove (find a full tutorial here).

We finally finished the area with a piece of beadboard behind the teapots which can be removed to access the electrical outlet we installed.

I think the butler’s pantry area is the most dramatic – and it took the most finagling trying to figure out how to deal with the holes left from an awkward gigantic breadboard in the lower cabinet and the weird cut-out in the upper cabinet skirt. (Again: take better before pictures!)

I’m so proud of Brian for figuring out a way to make my vision for the upper cabinet skirt to come to life here – it wasn’t easy to make scrolls with a jigsaw on attached cabinets, but it looks like it was always meant to be this way, doesn’t it?

And to cover up the base cabinet holes, we attached simple flat molding, both along the length and down the middle. Caulk and paint make everything look like it’s always been there.

I refinished the original wood breakfast bar to match the new counters and even though one is a wood veneer and the other is oak, the dark stain helps them coordinate nicely, I think.

Since we had everything out for staining and it really needed it, I went ahead and refinished the built-in desk, too. It looks 100 times better, so I’m glad I did (you can see a closeup of the desk before in this organizing post). Um, yes, next up is repainting the desk, too.

There will be a more detailed article with more details on our DIY kitchen remodel with a cost-breakdown, plus another article just on the counters. (UPDATE: here is the Details and Cost Breakdown article for the remodel and here is the article all about the wood counters.)

For now, though, how giddy do you think I am to be checking all these things off the master kitchen remodel to-do list?

1. Sand all cabinet doors and bases (filling holes and sanding as necessary)
2. Demolish remaining tile counters
3. Cover openings left in a cabinet from an unused breadboard with molding (and a few other places to finish cabinets) – caulk and paint
4. Use a jigsaw to even up the underside of one cabinet that had been cut out by previous owners
5. Move small cabinet by fridge over a couple inches to gain space between stove and corner cabinet (?)
6. Paint all cabinets and doors 
7. Add beadboard as a backsplash – trim all edges, caulk/fill and paint (though there’s still a bit of caulking left)
8. Measure and cut wood counters
9. Stain and finish counters
10. Install counters
11. Install new sink
12. Install new faucet
13. Install rod for hanging utensils behind stove (decided against this after we rearranged our utensil drawers)
14. Replace old off-white electrical outlets with new white ones
15. Sew a new curtain for sink cabinet
16. Added 12/1: Cut, stain, and finish quarter-round to edge all the countertops

And that’s it! I’m calling it done and won’t bore you with a list again. So tell me – what do you think?

Like some more details? Go to this post to read more about the kitchen redo, including links and cost breakdown!