Then & Now: Kitchen/Dining Room

It's finally time for the big unveiling! Since we purchased our home in April 2010, we've tackled our big "must-do" projects every few months or so. Our latest project was to finish our kitchen, more or less. The entryway, laundry room and kitchen had this horrible laminate flooring... which lead into white carpet in our dining room, hallway and living room. As I'm sure everyone has heard before, I HATE that white carpet. Over the 8 months, Miss Zora has created quite a worn, dirty path from the sliding door to the living room windows. Thank God it's finally gone!

Without further ado... the first installment of our home improvement project!

I really wish we had a mud room or at least a little more space in our entryway, but this is what we have to work with. For organization, I purchased one of those cloth wall hanging pockets for the inside of the coat closet and this cork/white board for our lil family command center.

Major changes in the kitchen/dining room area include:

• Solid vinyl tile flooring
• Repainted all the walls and ceiling
• Added wallpaper below the chair rail and soffits
• Two new light fixtures
• Painted the hutch black (from it's original green)
• Refinished the dining room table and chairs
• Removed all the tiny dowels from the top of the cupboards
• Added valances over both windows
• New silver doorknobs, handles and hinges
• Four sets of speakers installed in the ceiling throughout the house

Can't find a curtain rod that will fix a space the way you want it? A couple of tension rods work great! A huge thank you to my mom for making my valances! 

When we purchased our home, there was the ugly, plastic strip underneath our cabinets. With our new floor, my husband made these really nice looking kickplates with the leftover vinyl tiles!

Pier 1 had these handy lil wine glass holders that fit nicely underneath the upper portion of the hutch.

After we knocked out the old people dowels above our cabinets, we inlayed some white Christmas lights down in the groove. Fortunately, there was already an outlet in one of the upper cupboards... so all it took was a small hole to feet the plug through.