1946 Kitchen Remodel

Here’s what our small kitchen looked like when we bought the house in March of 2013. (This was the 5th house we made an offer on during our insane house hunt!)  We think they gave it a quick re-skin before putting it on the market. Our house was built in 1946 and we are only the second family to own it. The floors, counters, backsplash, and appliances were all new. The cabinets and walls were all painted a pinkish beige color, and I especially love the boob pendant light that was installed! But, it was clean, new, and we were so happy to call it ours.

On the other side of the peninsula is the breakfast nook and a door to our side porch.

One of the first things I did when we moved in was paint a giant chalkboard wall in the breakfast nook and get a new light fixture. I loved the one black wall so much I painted the rest of the room and above the cabinets with the same chalkboard paint. 

I reupholstered the dining room chairs.

And then sold that set and got a new table and chairs. For the record, glass tables are not fun with little kids. (I also got a second baby!) And decided the chalk board calendar was too much to keep up with on a monthly basis. I still loved the contrast of the black wall and white trim, so I added a fun a gallery wall.

I worked with ClosetMaid and gave our small pantry a much needed makeover. I also ended up adding a creative station in the corner of the kitchen nook. You can see in the picture below the kids art station. This is the wall that will get knocked down to make the kitchen entry wider. That brings y’all up to date on the progress of our kitchen over the last 5 years. It’s charming and gets great light especially in the morning, but it’s crusty and old and I can’t wait for the remodel!

After 5 years of living in our house and talking about remodeling our kitchen one bazillion times, we knew what we wanted.

Our small kitchen remodel plan

1. Knock out the peninsula to open up the space.
2. Get rid of the 2 cabinet boxes above the peninsula and install 2 open shelves.
3. Get rid of the double sink and install a single basin farmhouse sink.
4. Cut off 3 inches of our existing cabinets to make the space between the counter and the cabinet feel normal.
5. Replace old cabinet doors with shaker style cabinet fronts.
6. Get all new hardware.
7. Install new counters, backsplash, and floors.
8. Re-paint the existing cabinets.
9. Buy a new dishwasher, refrigerator, and install a beverage fridge.
10. Close the 3 in. gap on either side of the stove.
11. Get rid of the microwave and install a vent hood.
12. Install an outlet in the pantry incase we want a microwave later.
13. Build a wrap around bench in the kitchen nook with extra storage.
14. Open up the entry to kitchen from a single door to a 65 in. wide entry.

Why we decided to keep our original cabinets

Short story. Cost.

Long story. Oringially we were going to keep the original cabinets and exposed hinges and give everything a fresh coat of paint. I was spending a ridiculous amount of time on Pinterest trying to find some inspiration for my 1946, exposed hinge cabinets. I needed picture evidence that painting these things was going to make me love them. The only thing I could find that I kind of liked was a kitchen makeover by Emily Henderson in 2014. These are our exact exposed hinge, flat faced kitchen cabinets! If Emily Henderson couldn’t make me love them, then there was no hope for ours. We had to get new cabinets.

We got a quote to get custom cabinets made to fit our kitchen and it came in at $14,000. Yikes. That wasn’t going to work. We settled on getting all new cabinet fronts made for $2,500, 1/6th of the cost! Our 1946 cabinets are actually really well made. They’re solid wood, and I also love the old school method of making corner cabinets. See how the corner cabinet is angled out? It’s a deep cabinet that stores all of the hand held appliances! We ultimately decided it wasn’t worth spending so much money on our kitchen remodel, and not updating the cabinets.

Andy drew up a basic plan for the kitchen remodel. We had to make some adjustments to our existing cabinet boxes because of the new refrigerator, ripping out the peninsula, and eliminating the gap on either side of the stove.

I can’t wait to show y’all the finished product! I am so dang excited about our kitchen! I’ll leave you with my kitchen remodel inspiration board on Pinterest and this fun before and progress picture of the same angle in our kitchen. Bye, bye peninsula, upper cabinets, and microwave!

Our small kitchen is already feeling so much more open and spacious. For more kitchen sneak peeks, follow along on Instagram.