Kitchen Makeover Pictures

Since gutting our kitchen for new custom cabinets was not in our budget, I settled for painting our existing cabinets. Our old cabinets had a country look with the grainy wood showing through the varnish. They're cheap with only the fronts and doors being actual wood, but standard issue for homes like ours. There's nothing completely objectionable about these cabinets, but their appearance definitely didn't do anything for my downstairs. Here are some "before" shots that I snapped just before we started dismantling.

One of the biggest kitchen improvements we did was replacing our sink and faucet with a deeper sink and taller, sleeker faucet. Mr. Morgan and Dad replaced the sink over the Christmas holiday. My "before" shots were after the sink replacement, but imagine a shallow, ugly, barely-functional-for-washing-dishes sink.

After four days of labor-intensive work, the newly painted cabinet doors were back in place. I spent several more days rearranging the stuff in the cabinets and paring down to what I decided I couldn't live without.

I worked hard to eliminate all unnecessary items from my countertops, since counter space is so limited.

Our black appliances seem to pair much better with the new colors of the cabinets.

I opted for a minimal amount of stuff on the fridge. Sometimes it's easy to get carried away with pictures, the kids' masterpieces, and reminders.

I feel like I'm cooking in a whole new kitchen.

I reorganized my spices, oils, and vinegars, moving them away from the heat of my stove. I love the way the new labels turned out, and I decided to keep only my most-used spices on this rack. The other seldom-used spices are in the cabinet in a basket. Yes, they're in alphabetical order. Is there a better order?

The drawer pulls and door handles are the same ones; we installed them soon after we moved in. However, with the painted surfaces the modern pulls and handles show up so much better.

I'm so thankful for my revamped kitchen--and especially for my parents who watched the boys for five days and for Mr. Morgan who helped on his day off, lived in a mess for close to a week, and endured fried eggs for several dinners in a row.