We are halfway through the 8 week One Room Challenge and our kitchen refresh is finally starting to take shape this week! 

If you are just joining us, you can catch up on the story of the One Room Challenge and on what we’ve accomplished on our kitchen refresh in the three previous weeks here:

Week 1 with the before pictures that put the ’challenge’ in one room challenge!

Week 2 with the saga of the hood and an update on the the possessed appliances

Week 3 with the decisions still to be made and our process for choosing patterns

This week has seen a lot of progress and it’s finally starting to feel like a new space, but it definitely got worse before it got better!

The millwork went in and I began madly painting the rest of that and the cabinet boxes before I picked up the finished doors and drawer fronts.

Handy Paint was kind enough to send me this wonderful care package full of goodies!  The paint trays and buckets and liners made my life easier and the paint covers in 3 sizes are brilliant little shower caps for the trays and buckets so you can leave them ready to go for the next application!

My paint required 4 hrs between coats so being able to leave the paint in the tray saved time and product.  I’m using Sayerlack Coating paint (recommended by the pro painting the doors) and it is terrific, but pricey, so not wasting any is great!

I picked up the doors on Monday.  My painter is running out of moving blankets so she carefully wrapped them all in an assortment of leftover blankets and sheets 🤣.  She did an ah-may-zing job and these cabinets are going to look brand new!

My kitchen is not very big, but after schlepping all 31 hefty doors and drawer fronts out of the car and up a flight of stairs to the kitchen, I’m very glad, for a change, that it is not larger!

My handyman came to install the lazy susan and start attaching the doors and drawer fronts and hardware.

At this point most of the kitchen was scattered around my dining room and living room🙄.  The drawers all had to be emptied to get to the screws to attach everything.

My mantra is always to “feed the contractors” and so, even though I had to retrieve the baking pans from under the dining room table, and the parchment from a dining room chair and the knives and spatulas from a basket in the living room, I still managed to offer fresh-out-of-the-oven cinnamon crunch coffee cake for him to have with his morning coffee.

The lazy susan insert proved to be a PITA to install, but Ralph is terrific and determined and it is now in place and loaded with my new wedge shaped containers to hold my various cooking oils and vinegars etc conveniently next to the stove.

Two of the cabinet doors were new purchases to replace old arch topped ones and the existing vintage hinges didn’t work with the new doors - a small hiccup that was again solved in short order by Ralph.

By Tuesday evening my drawers had their fronts and handles and all the doors were on as was most of the hardware and I was able to reload much of the stuff from the dining room back into the kitchen. YAY!

I luuurve this hardware.  I chose one of my favorite Top Knobs styles, Davenport, in honey bronze for the drawer pulls and knobs.  The knobs have a little prong on the stem that sticks into the door when they are screwed on to keep them from twisting - brilliant! You can see the video in my IG fall 2023 ORC story highlights.

I chose the 6 1/4” size as the best option that would suit all the drawer sizes, using a pair on each of the 36” drawers.  The cabinet doors all got the matching knob except the two tall cabinets, on which I used vertical pulls.

In addition to the cabinets getting finished this week I also:

ordered my new stove, very exciting but that is a story for another day

ordered the fabric and trim for the window treatment

collected samples for the tile backsplash

And today, I installed the wallpaper in the backs of the shelves and reloaded all my dishes and glasses.  The dining room is down to pots and pans and give-away items now!

Next week, in the middle of everything, I leave for a two week trip to visit my daughter in Germany. #timing, but it was when she would have a break from work so Carpe Diem.

But I have things happening while I’m gone and I have workmen lined up to, hopefully, pull everything together the last week in time for the reveal. Fingers crossed - the hood is still a wild card - the replacement is theoretically arriving the day before I leave.

Phew! Cheers to great progress, though!

For what’s happening with all the other participants in this One Room Challenge, check out the updates for this week HERE!

Auf Wiedersehen!