House Before and After: Kitchen Remodel

I am among the believers that the kitchen is the central point of the home! The kitchen tends to be the primary gathering spot and due to the fact that I love to entertain and my husband is a fabulous cook our home search required a large kitchen. We made the mistake of looking at model homes in our initial search which left me desiring the newly popular 'great room' style. The great room combines multiple spaces into a singular unified space (ie. kitchen flows into the dining room and the living room). The moment we walked into our current home I immediately envisioned the removal of the wall between the kitchen and dining room in order to create this open great room feeling. It went from a "want" to a "need" once we closed escrow :). After all our hard labor and DIY projects my husband and I decided that this would not be a project we would take on ourselves. After interviewing a few different contractors we settled on one which turned out to be a disastrous. Because I am from the school of thought that it is impossible to find a reliable contractor, I think I set myself up for failure. All said and done the window between our kitchen and dining room turned out great and was worth the 7 day turned 7 week project! Here are the before, during, and after shots of the kitchen. Keep in mind that this is still a work in progress and I welcome any suggestions on what to do for kitchen window coverings and any other ideas.

Before...

This house was a foreclosure and the previous owner took his beautiful 48 in range. After a 2 month search we found this GE monogram range with a double oven, grill, griddle and 4 burners at a reasonable price. We LOVE it!!! We struggled with what to do for the back splash behind this gorgeous stove. We settled on this marble brick looking back splash and took on the project ourselves. I learned to tile, grout and seal the grout. It is much harder than it looks, but super rewarding when it was all done!

After some painting and installation of appliances but before Construction...

During Construction...

The construction involved moving the refrigerator to where the desk used to be, extending the granite and adding cabinets where the refrigerator used to be, moving the plumbing for the refrigerator to the new location, moving electrical, adding a wine cabinet, making a granite step-up bar bar on the dining room side of the window, arching the window and the doorway to match, custom cabinets to frame the refrigerator where the desk used to be and a little painting to finish the job. Here are the photos!

After...

Happy Thursday!!!