The OLD Kitchen, yikes!

The new and improved layout.

There hasn’t been a whole lot in the way of fashion here on the blog lately because we are knee deep in this project right here. We finally decided to go through with our kitchen renovation, a project that was long looming over our heads. Our house had gone through a major renovation before we purchased it. Unfortunately, that renovation fell short of the kitchen. Not to say they didn’t attempt to update it, it was put together with all of the reject pieces from Home Depot and Lowes. After doors and cabinets began to fall off the walls we decided we could procrastinate no longer.

Living in Hawaii you don’t get a whole lot of bang for your buck so to speak. We were already working with a pretty small space and it was hard to imagine how we were going to maximize that space to make it work for our family. The current layout didn’t really allow for much more storage space so I decided to extend the counter out into the living room and also make a wrap around space along the wall in the back. It’s amazing how these two little tweaks alone made the space look so much bigger (bigger for Hawaii standards I should say).

High on my list was a breakfast bar for the kids. Our dining room table has taken several hits over the years. It was never meant for everyday messy eating. More as a table you’d gather around for Sunday night family dinners or during Thanksgiving, Christmas and other special events. Not a wise choice for small space living I will say. But it is what it is and we made do with what we had. I don’t think it will be passed down as a great family heirloom after its abuse. Getting back to the counter, our architect added additional storage space at the breakfast bar. I finally have a place to store those Christmas Pottery Barn dishes and serving pieces that rarely see the light of day.

Here are a few things I’ve learned about renovating anything. It is NEVER confined to the room you’re renovating no matter how big your efforts might be, it affects every, single room in your home and probably your yard and garage too. If they say it will take two days, it will take two weeks, maybe even two months and if we keep heading this way it might take two years. Nature of the beast friends. I’ll be sharing more in depth detail of these projects in the weeks to come.