Throwing back all the way to my very first Kitchen Reveal

The last post I wrote about my kitchen was back in 2024 when I was doing my “ten years then and now” blog posts but besides that I haven’t given you guys an update on my kitchen since 2019! So, my little kitchen might be in need of a makeover and I do have some new things here to share with you guys. I’ve always found that I like cooking in galley kitchens more than any other design so I was happy that this home was ideal for that as I love to cook.

In the last home I lived in the kitchen layout fit a kitchen table for everyone to gather at and keep the cooks company and I really loved that. So, if I had one gripe about my kitchen that would probably be it. Though I still feel like a galley kitchen is the ideal layout for actual cooking.

My kitchen here though is not as small as I give it credit for. Three of us have easily worked in this space together without getting in each other’s way. One thing that helped with that is my main appliances being at opposite ends of the counters. So that’s giving me a ton of uninterrupted counter space.

HERE IS THE ORIGINAL POST FROM AUGUST OF 2019

Oh I am so excited to finally show you my kitchen reveal! You guys have heard me talk many times about how it took me fifteen months to renovate my grandparents’ 100 year old farm house.

It was a tremendous amount of work but I did get the majority of it done and now I’ve been living here for a year in August! I know, I know, you can throw tomatoes at me, I have not yet given you guys the complete home tour.

(8/1/2019 OMG I can’t believe its been three years since this post came out! Since then my kitchen has gone through a ton of transformations, almost as many as I have myself! I am still so thrilled with the kitchen I built but now I just finished remodeling the entire room! CHECK IT OUT HERE!)

You’ve seen my Master bedroom, closet and bathroom as well as my office but, after that, I’ve been pretty much mute.

SO, I got out my camera, did a little staging, and tackled the big photography job for this kitchen reveal. But, first, allow me to take a trip down memory lane 🙂

This shot I took not long after I had finally concluded the majority of the electrical and plumbing throughout, this was the winter/spring of 2015. What a lot of work!

Look at that my Grandma’s old Cosco stool just hanging out – it was my constant companion during the renovation and I just gave it a makeover – click here to go check that out.

Here I am, the first picture I took of my floors right after I finished sanding them! I was so excited to get to this point I could barely contain myself.

Remember my very first post here on the blog? How to: install an inexpensive wood floor that looks like a million dollars. That’s that very floor there in the fore ground butting up to the original hardwoods!

And now the last shot before I finally show you guys the kitchen reveal! Here is my Grandma’s kitchen right before I started my renovation, my grandparents’ built this kitchen when they installed indoor plumbing in the home for the very first time in 1958.

They put the bathroom behind the kitchen which I relocated to another part of the house. I can only imagine how exciting it must have been for them: a brand new kitchen AND indoor plumbing!

I will be the first to admit that tearing out my grandma’s kitchen was a very hard thing to do and, looking at it now, my heart aches a bit.

I think this might be my favorite view 🙂 You can see the wall I took down in the before pic and replaced with a beam and you can also see the front door that remains the EXACT same door and screened door in both pictures!

(Yup they need a new paint job BADLY!) And, of course, like it almost always is in the summers, the door was left open so I could get a breeze through the screen 🙂

You can also see in the after picture one of my old rocking chairs and that closet I built to cover up my major eyesore!

“When using salvaged cabinets for a renovation, cabinet refacing is a great solution to refresh them. The older the better, as these will typically be furniture-grade and of the highest quality.” says Linda Fennessy, Marketing Manager of Kitchen Magic

There are so many elements here that I’ve shared along the way on the blog that completes this kitchen reveal! My kitchen sink base I made from scratch to fit that old cast iron sink that I found in a shed and fell in love with.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that I showed you guys my $5 garage sale desk that became my coffee station and, of course, one of the most popular posts I have ever written, my red kitchen island I built out an old radio stand of my great grandpa’s.

The wood shed door (over there to the right of the stove) I built out of an old window screen and even wrote a tutorial on how I stenciled “wood shed” on the screen.

There are some things I haven’t had a chance to tell you about though, those glass cabinet doors are not perfect if you look close, in fact they are WONKY and that’s because they’ve never been cabinet doors and they were never built to be cabinet doors and they’re really old! They’re windows! In fact, I have a picture of my cabinet doors before in their old life 🙂

When I converted the old wood shed (yup, that was actually a wood shed that I made into living space during the renovation) I took out those windows. SO I had those three pretty and very old windows stashed (along with all the others in the house that I was able to salvage) and from day one I really thought I would be able to use some of them for my kitchen.

When I tackled my kitchen cabinets (yup I built almost all of them and I was not being brave lol I was terrified the whole time I was gonna screw them up!) I took my tape measure out to the garage and held my breath.

I needed THREE matching windows that would fit the cupboards I had just built. Honestly, in the beginning, I wasn’t sure where they had come from I always just thought “old windows out of the house” I had no idea they were the wood shed windows until I started looking close at that very picture.

(Fifteen months is a long time and most of the windows I took out in the first month of renovation and I built my kitchen literally the month I moved in so I just plain forgot!)

No, they are not perfect and they will never be “straight” but, honestly, that’s what I love about them 🙂 Another one of my most popular posts here at Grandma’s House DIY was about how my oak kitchen counter tops looked like a hill billy after a bad fight.

And I am so pleased to report that after I fixed my DIY oak kitchen counters they have really held up well over the passed few months! Anyway, back to the kitchen reveal!

I purchased all of my LG appliances “new” at a scratch and dent seller and I absolutely LOVE them. I got them for HALF their new cost and was able to get far nicer appliances then I ever dreamed of and never could have afforded otherwise.

If you notice you can see the dings on them and the refrigerator door handles are bent. All of it can be fixed but, at least for now, I just don’t have the extra money to spend on something cosmetic like that.

My grandparents’ made my paper towel holder and I had always planned on having an open shelf above the sink for a place to hang it. The light above my sink was the yard light hanging off the pole for about thirty years before it came down and I had it replaced with a modern light.

I also have an old yard light above my master bathroom sink too and I’ve got plans on writing a blog post about them someday, I love them. I also really love my magnetic knife rack and, so far anyway, I love the back splash I chose and installed with liquid nails. I purchased it off of Amazon.

It comes in 2×4 foot sheets and at only $17 per sheet, you really can’t beat it and it cuts with a pair of scissors and I like that it looks like old tin ceiling tiles 🙂

I wish I had went ahead and put it behind the stove too because it looks a little naked in the pictures but, honestly, on a day to day basis, I never even notice it.

When I installed those two glass exterior doors (one on either side of the kitchen) I was given more then a few odd looks from my family members.

No one doubts that choice now though, the kitchen flows right out on to my deck from two different places and the glass doors let in so much light! I’m currently working on getting screen doors on those doors as we speak and, of course, I’ll tell you guys all about it when I do get them done 🙂

I think of my kitchen as a working man’s kitchen – it doesn’t feel new nor does it feel fragile or breakable in any way. It’s tough like the 100 year old house I put it in.

There is nothing that’s truly “new” feeling here, I didn’t mean for it to end up looking like an old country kitchen but I am glad that it did.

There is SO much storage! Because I built everything I was able to plan down to the smallest spoon where everything would go and just what I needed.

My pantry remains one of the coolest things in the kitchen – every time I pull it out I can’t believe how much stuff it stores.

In the end, even if I had had the money to hire someone else to build this kitchen I’m very glad that I didn’t. As beautiful as the master bedroom and other places of the house turned out it is true what the say: the kitchen is the heart of the home and I am more proud of this portion of my home then any other aspect.