A Fabulous Kitchen Restoration Reveal!

I’ll start with a couple of before photos.  The first is looking into the kitchen from the lounge/dining room with me sitting at our temporary make shift island bench flipping through a magazine as I do!  There is also a closer view with Hubby caught out in his pj’s! (He, he, he!!)

So the first job was to remove the shelving above the sink which I have since painted white and re-hung in my sons room (that story to come..).    Next was to tackle the floor and I don’t think we knew how bad it was going to be……..

Underneath we discovered this black thick and dried glue!  We tried sanding, we tried kerosene, we tried paint stripper….  It was an extremely slow and tiring task which seemed to take hours with only a small area exposed.

 

I know it sounds brutal and probably very dangerous but the one thing that did the trick with far less grief was …..  wait for it…..  a blow torch!!!!!  Scary stuff but hey it did the job beautifully!!!

Wow, look it is magic! The floors are being prep’d for sanding and the cupboards have magically turned white!!!  Thank you to Lisa for her fantastic paint job!

Notice the tiles above the sink with their embossed picture.  We thought we would be replacing those but Ben talked me into just trying the tile paint that is now available.  I must admit I was very skeptical but the result has been great!  I actually quite like the embossed look and we will now do the tiles behind the oven alcove as well…

Now that job was done, it was time to replace my (oh so handy and really did the job) makeshift island bench with a real one.  After doing the ring and run around, I discovered that many kitchen companies are not interested in just building you an island bench!!!  They want the whole deal…  

 

So, I gave up on the ridiculous quote of $7,000 just for an island bench and went with Ben’s idea of doing it himself using IKEA draws/cupboards and a bit of chippy work!!!  Again my skepticism kicked in and we had many a ‘discussion’ over it but I have to give him absolute full credit!  He did it and I love it!!!!  Especially with my Le Forge stools.  The final cost of our home job was approximately $2,000 ($400 for draws, $400 for materials – framing timber etc and $1,000 for Caesar stone bench top and $200 for electrical – I have power points on both sides) Thank you Lovey xxx

Just need to add the last door and put in the kick board….