My Inspiration and My New Kitchen ....

the before

I literally raised the ceiling 8"

My kitchen was crying for a make over!

I went to the magazines and the internet for Inspiration.

"The After"

 

 My new sink and faucet are my pride and joy!
Click here to see how I painted my counter top. 

 "This photo was my Kitchen Inspiration" 

I had a copy  tacked to the wall in my kitchen

and looked at it each and every day.

I may not have copied it to the exact, but the brightness and

sunny disposition of this kitchen "I have achieved"

 

 I moved into this Townhouse about 6 years ago and the kitchen was the last thing on my mind at the time.  I think it was the area and the property that sold me.  Once I was living here for about 6 months I realized what a cave felt like. 
The kitchen was dark and dingy and had this really awful "Light" above. It had  a ceiling fan surrounded by 6 florescent lights.  "It had to go"... yes, the entire kitchen, had to go!
I had only one problem.  My budget, (well I really did not have a budget)  I knew it would cost a fortune to gut the kitchen and start from scratch so I did the next best thing.... I would do it myself!  How hard could it be to paint, demolish and recreate this space? Almost every day I gave at least an hour to this reno.. I did stop for two months due to illness, but after that I continued!   The entire project started with painting every piece of wood furniture white.  For weeks I painted, tables, chairs, cabinets and anything that I could get my paint on.  I brought home yard sale finds and painted them white also.
The white of the kitchen cabinets is wonderful.   I'm also thinking of taking down a few cabinet doors. One thing I've noticed about me, as the renovation was in progress, with each change I made I found a new feature I liked and made more changes. Now I want to put legs on the cabinet bottoms.  
As of now I'm in the build a desk/cabinet in the kitchen mode.  This was a wasted space, and the cabinet will be for "me" and my laptop.  

"Today's photo of the unfinished cabinet that I worked on all day"

As silly as this may sound I found the Inspiration in my doctors office.
The shape of this space had me scratching my head for almost a week until I went in for my Well Woman Exam... there is was!

What to do in an odd space!

I'll do a post of the finished project soon. I just got the idea of a few shelves on the under left side? See what I mean, I change the design on everything before it's completely finished.

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The living room was the next space to get a renovation.
This is how the "Fireplace Wall Unit" started.

Click here to see how I made the Fireplace Unit


 This next photo was my "Inspiration"

I loved the look , the  clean lines of the surround.

The above fireplace is something I really wanted.. but our HMO would not allow me to tear down the wall for the chimney.  The simple lines of this fireplace is what I love most,  but I wanted it to be a 'built in' so I went to my Home Depot and had the nice lumber guy cut all the wood for me and I built my own  with the addition of book shelves on either side. The insert heater was ordered on line from the "Amish" and it is really nice.. the faux flame is perfect for setting the mood and it has a remote to control the heat from high to off... with the flame remaining just for looks.
Along with my "Creamy White Slip Covers" I've added a few accent colors of blue, apple green and orange.. the walls are a blue-gray color.  

I pulled the carpet from the entire downstairs, as well as the staircase. 
The new floor went in this past week and I'm happy to say.. I'm about finished with my renovation of the first floor.

I've come to love the "Cottage White" look and soon the design will travel up the stairs  to the next level. All of my inspiration came from bloggers, magazines and internet sites.  Where does yours come from?

I'll be joining

Show Us Your Kitchen

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hugggsss

Sandy

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