Hello friends! I have been meaning to do this blog post for quite some time now. Last August, Bryan and I closed on our first townhouse together. This isn't your typical soulless townhouse either. It was designed by Charles Goodman and built in 1965. It is seriously one of the coolest townhouse designs I have ever been in, and we knew it was meant to be ours the second we walked into it.

Before they sold it, the previous owners did a lot of work. They made the kitchen open concept, got rid of the popcorn ceilings, polished up the original hardwood floors throughout, and cleaned up the backyard (which we also changed completely - that post will be coming soon).

Back to the kitchen - since this is the kitchen post. The kitchen was brand new when we moved in, but after walking through the house, Bryan and I both agreed that we were going to have to rip most of it out to fit our needs and just make it more "us". We ripped about half of the kitchen out the day we moved in. It took us about a month to complete the whole project (we got some help with the heavy lifting from my sister and her boyfriend) but other than that it was all Bryan and I. My favorite part was laying all the tile, it was so satisfying! Check out the BEFORE and AFTER pictures below! I also linked everything we bought at the end of the post.

As you can see, the kitchen didn't look THAT bad. But we knew we had to change it up a bit. We removed all of the upper cabinets (which were weird and tiny, and replaced with with larger ones that matched the lower cabinets. We decided to leave the lower cabinets because we loved the grey granite counter tops that were already there and it would have been way over our budget to change. The appliances were all new but were of "flipping" quality, so we replaced them with nicer ones, changed the pendants, painted the walls white, and added white subway tile with dark grout throughout. I'm IN LOVE with how it turned out.

We did not want the microwave to have the place of honor in our kitchen, and had always loved large tile walls, so we changed out the microwave for a recirculating vent. Bryan HATED the look of the previous range with the knobs on the back, and I agree that the new one is a huge improvement. We lucked out because the appliances had never been used, and the contractor who installed them agreed to buy them back from us at nearly full price, which went a long way towards paying for the upgrade.

Magnetic knife storage saves counter space AND looks awesome!

The previous owner went a very "interesting" direction with the upper cabinets....

CABINETS - Ikea Ringhult Collection
HARDWARE - Lowes
DINING TABLE - West Elm
DINING CHAIRS - Cb2
STOVE - Best Buy
EXHAUST HOOD - Ikea
FRIDGE - Best Buy
DISHWASHER - Ikea
SUBWAY TILE with charcoal grout - Home Depot
BAR STOOLS (similar) - Modern Contempo
COUNTER STOOLS - HomeGoods
COPPER PENDANTS - Houzz
TEA POT - Crate&Barrel
MARBLE CUTTING BOARD - Crate&Barrel
MARBLE UTENSIL HOLDER - Crate&Barrel
METAL KNIFE STRIP - Amazon
KNIVES - HomeGoods
MY DRESS - Lulus

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed this home renovation post. We had so much fun working on this together and making our home feel like home. We have been working on a ton of other projects and I can't wait to share more!

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