Kitchen face lift

Here are a few before and after pictures of my kitchen.

I had a very small budget when we moved in, so a complete dream kitchen makeover was not in the cards.  I was going to have to deal with the original cabinets, floors and arrangement. 
With a limited budget and even more limited schedule, I would have to settle for work in slow increments.  When we moved in last July I started working on the kitchen.  First, my husband and I installed wainscot, then I painted the cabinets, then we installed crown molding on the cabinets and little corner shelves.  I really don't have good after pics because the darn room is in such high use, it is never clean!

 A close-up of the wainscot.  Stay tuned, I have a project in the next year to turn this empty space into shelves.

I had a huge wall that I needed to cover, so I painted it green and put up my mod podge fruit labels. These were many projects that I started in my old house, but the wall was so large I had to add a few more.

My asparagus label is mounted on an actual wood food crate that I dumpster dived behind a Chinese restaurant, but after a bleach bath, it could hang art!  One of my favorite paintings is the Bon Appetite that a friend of mine painted for me.

 I already posted this one that I did last month, my chalkboard redo. 

We had this cart for years and it just held water and paper products in the garage in the old house, but we found it useful in the new house, so I sewed a skirt around it and it works to hide all the lunch boxes.  The best part is that it has wheels, so we can move it around when we need to.

Before

 The bench was a fun project where I used a crackle finish.  The table was another mod podge project that we complete in our old house when we were picked for HGTV's Design Remix.  It had been an IKEA table that we mod podged and turned into a coffee table, then when we moved I had to add table legs again!

 We added this huge carpet in front of the sink and at first we didn't think it would work, but I love it!  It really warms up the space.

 A little desk to write notes, or in reality a catch all when no one is taking pictures.

Above the desk.  I painted the Buitoni picture and made a roman shade to match the cart.

 Above my sink are all cheese labels from Europe (more mod podge projects).  I made the curtain and added piping on the bottom to add more texture.  It is so hard to photograph this space, there is a huge window and I either have too much sunlight or too much light from the overhead light!  Too bad you can't see the view outside, it is really pretty!

Here it is at night.

Thanks for stopping by!!
Linking to:
Blue Cricket Design