Phase One

You wouldn't naturally think that the beginning of a kitchen remodel begins in the living room, but ours does.  We can't do floors until the current kitchen and surrounding walls are taken down. One of the walls slated to be removed is one of the walls of the current kitchen, with four pantry cabinets, ovens, fridge, etc. This house isn't huge, and we knew we'd need a place for all the kitchen stuff in between the current kitchen and the new kitchen, so it looked like the perfect time to build built-in cabinets and shelves surrounding the fireplace. Because WHY NOT?!

Let's review what we were working with: 

Here is the living room the day we moved in. Not terrible, but lots of potential.

Here's the same space with some paint, a mantle and some many glassybabys (I'm addicted).

So we began…shelves and cabinets flanking the sides of the fireplace. Easy right? Not when the cabinets are 18" and no one makes an 18" base cabinet. Never mind then, super-Neal to the rescue.

 That was easy.

He moves so quickly that he's blurry in pictures.

In process:

Panel over the top of the brick for the TV eventually.

Strong enough for this guy to sit in them.

Now they just need to be painted:

We had to set up a plastic paint zone so the paint wouldn't get all over everything else in the room. Neal painted away while I held the plastic away from him so he could move around. The plastic was not transparent so I had to wait patiently until he was finished to see what they looked like. 

Looks better than raw wood, but I wanted more dimension to the shelves. Of course, I went with my go-to Sherwin Williams paint strip, and his is Gauntlet Grey.

I couldn't wait until the cabinet doors were installed to reveal the unit. Also, the remaining white brick will be covered up with some stone, which I'll show when it's actually finished. I'm dying to put all of my foofey things to display in the shelves, but for now, they'll be holding cereal, pots and pans, a rice cooker and snacks. That's ok for now because better things are coming!

Because I love before and afters:

And as I've been typing Neal is making the cabinet doors. More later on that!