My DIY Kitchen Makeover: The Affair Is Over, But It Was Worth It!

Genmedmom here.

Last month, I posted about my crazy DIY kitchen makeover project. Well, we finished weeks ago, and we're thrilled. It just took me forever to figure out how to make before/ after photos. (FYI, the Scrapcollage app is fantastic, very easy to use.)

Our kitchen was perfectly nice. Nice and yellow. Honey oak cabinets and floors, yellow-beige walls. The overall effect was that anyone standing in our kitchen immediately developed jaundice.

Plus, we've lived here for almost ten years, and we've never painted the kitchen. It was time. Farmhouse is in, and so farmhouse we got.

So here we go, Benjamin Moore "Slate Gray" Cabinets and "Hardwood Putty" Walls. My uncle is a contractor who helped immensely with the priming and painting of the cabinets. Kudos to my mom as well, who did a whole lot of Ikea shopping and wall painting with me:

Our main entryway is the back door leading into the kitchen, and we have no closet there. The freestanding coatrack would get so heavy it fell down numerous times, so we were throwing overflow crap on the floor and a chair. That whole situation had to change. So I bought a cheap standing coat and hat rack at Ikea, which my uncle attached to the wall:

I also bought cheap Ikea bookcases which we made into storage benches, and my mom sewed removeable pillow covers out of the water-resistant fabric I'd bought on sale at Fabric.com. (Thanks again, mom!) These benches are game-changers: so super-sturdy, and useful:

We were sick of looking at the kitty litterbox, so I ordered a hideaway one on Amazon that's disguised as a little table, and stuck it under our new location for the message board (which is still a mess, but hey, it's the message board):

I repurposed a particleboard pantry I'd bought at Home Depot for sixty dollars like five years ago and was using to store all sorts of mishmosh. Painted it Benjamin Moore "Apollo Blue", changed the location, and now it holds cookware:

The best part about this makeover is it was mainly done for organization purposes, to help us to de-clutter. It certainly did that, and more. Overall, we are very happy!

We also did the dining room and bathroom, but those are posts for another day.

Got a project you want to tackle? Go for it!

Better Than An Affair: My DIY Budget Kitchen Makeover

Genmedmom here.

I'm nuts. But in a good, doctor-mom-nuts way. 

I just started a DIY budget kitchen reorganization and makeover, in the midst of Hubby's busiest time of his workyear, the kids' busiest time of the schoolyear, and my own perpetually crazy clinical/research/writing career life.

Yes, the kitchen looks like it blew up. Yes, my hands are covered with "Apollo Blue" paint. Yes, I've already gone over my $500 budget. Yes, Hubby is raising his eyebrows every time another package is delivered.

But I am having so much fun.

This has been such a delicious, decadent creative treat. The stolen time for planning and plotting, poring over colors with the Benjamin Moore guy at the local hardware store; guiltily perusing the Ikea website catalog during work hours; lying in bed after the kids are asleep sneaking peeks at Pinterest kitchen remodel pins... This is the type of affair for me!

I haven't for one second regretted tackling what is the largest household project I've ever undertaken. It's consuming every spare second of time I have, and there's not much.

I will be asking family for help, especially when it comes time to painting the walls and hanging heavy shelving, yes, that is true. Lucky for me, I'm related to several carpenters and contractors! But thus far, this project is MINE.

So, lately I've been wondering why it is that I'm so freaking happy about this craziness, and I think it's for several reasons:

One, the news cycle is so freaking depressing, this project helps me to focus on something over which I have actual control, and is actually positive.

Two, while Hubby is supportive (I did ask his opinion first), this kitchen makeover is essentially mine. It's visibly, tangibly, MINE. It's the first time in my life I've had a bit of extra cash to do something like this, and I am ecstatic. I can't go over $1000, but I'm ecstatic anyways.

Three, a large part of the undertaking is in order to get organized. Our family is so, so busy, and the kitchen is central station. Yes, it especially looks like it blew up lately, but, it always kind of looks like it blew up. My goal is to change that.

And four, I think it's a healthy doctor-mom thing to have a personal project on the side. I was reminded of an old post by Fresh, MD, a popular one titled "Ten Guidelines for Medicine-Life Balance", where she recommends having at least one non-medical creative project going on at all times. Usually I'm planning a birthday party or hosting a special meal, smaller stuff like that. This DIY thing is a bigger deal, but it is still just another personal, creative thing. I think she's totally right that we type-A intellectual overachieving dorks really need an outlet like this.

I'll definitely post about it when it's done, and let you all be the judge of my creative effort!