A Kitchen Redesign -a little at a time!

Susan at Between Naps on the Porch is hosting Metamorphosis Monday. Please visit her for lots of inspirational photos!

When we bought our house in 2002, we knew it was a 'fixer upper.' So I've included our 'before' pictures in with my post.Here is a before of the kitchen before the other family moved out:
And here is the same view of my kitchen today:
We have done the remodeling in stages, and of course when you do that, there are always things that you wish you might have done differently. We replaced the appliances within a year, and now I wish that I had bought stainless steel.

My original plan was to have new cabinet doors put on the existing cabinets and add granite counter tops. After getting estimates from several contractors, we decided to replace the cabinets and use Formica on the counter tops. Maybe one day we'll add the granite or quartz counter tops, but we had to cut costs somewhere to stay within the budget...and that was the place for us. I'm so glad now that we had new cabinets put in...they not only look better, but are so much more efficiently designed!

The kitchen is not very large as you can see, so the redesign of the cabinet space, which was done on a computer, has made the area so much more usable. We have two of these corner cabinets...one on each side of the window. They are very deep and hold quite a bit. We chose stacks of drawers rather than cabinets with doors wherever possible. I really can find most everything so much easier. And all but the top drawer are deep enough to hold most pots and pans.
Here is another stack of drawers on the other side.
To utilize every bit of space, we used these corner cabinets that swing open with lazy Susan shelves on both sides of the sink. Now I can get to stuff that used to be almost impossible to reach.
Here is a before view of the other side of the room...the breakfast area before the other family moved.
And here is a picture of the way it is today.
We replaced the fluorescent overhead fixtures with ceiling fans and put in ceramic tile. One of my friends tried to get me to put in hardwood or laminate....I wish I had listened to her--the grout is a pain to clean. But as soon as I finish teaching this semester, redoing the grout with a permanent paint is on my list of projects!

The room has been repainted since we moved in...from golden grain to the sage green you see in this picture. I'm thinking of replacing the table in the corner with a chair and nice lamp to make a reading area. We never use this table! Our dining area is convenient to the living area, and we eat there or at the bar. So as you can tell...I'm not really totally 'done' with this room!

One of my favorite things in this room is my Daisy Chain pottery by Mississippi artist Gail Pittman.
I have quite a few pieces of this as you may notice from the other pictures. The pottery originally belonged to my daughter, Kelli at Sassy Southern Mom, and when she moved in her new home, it no longer worked for her....so I inherited it all! The color in the picture is a little off...the green in the dishes is not quite as bright as it looks in this picture. Daisy Chain has been discontinued, so I'm always on the lookout for it on Ebay, antique stores or flea markets.

Thanks for stopping by!