Our blessed second hand kitchen!

When Josh and I bought Éveiller House we were a little nervous. I mean, who buys a church to turn into a house? And who does this when they have three boys running around getting into everything? We do, apparently. But that wasn't the only reason we were nervous. The church only had a kitchen in the basement, and if you know anything about old church basement kitchens, you know that they are not nice... and kinda creepy. 

We were buying the church at a much lower price then we had bought our old house at, which was a huge blessing for us, but we didn't have a kitchen... Well, a kitchen I wasn't afraid of, that is. So off I went to Home Depot to design my new kitchen. 

The gentleman at Home Depot was awesome. I'm good at designing things, but I need someone to help me with the logistics of things, which he was great at, and he had a few things to add to the overall design as well. I had two different appointments with him, each around 4 hours, figuring out every tiny detail. We technically weren't even done, and the design did not include any appliances, countertops, or installation... and it was 30k just for the cabinets. 

Excuse me while I go have a heart attack about that. 

Not only that, but yes, I loved the cabinets I picked out, but they weren't really what I wanted. I wanted something more worn, weathered, scruffy looking... but new things don't look that way. And, after all I picked out appliances, and countertops, we were looking at over a $40k kitchen. Technically we did not want to spend $40k on a kitchen... we didn't want to spend $20k on a kitchen! But we kinda felt like we had no other choice. We didn't want to spend a ton less, and then have to change the kitchen in a few years because it wasn't big enough, or things were breaking in it. So we took a deep breath, practically died from the thought of spending that much money, and proceeded. 

Isn't it pretty? 

Then one day we got a call from my dad. Someone at work we remodeling their kitchen, and was wondering if we wanted some of the appliances. Um, YES! Then we got pictures of the kitchen, and it turned out that they were getting rid of everything. Microwave, double wall oven, cook top, countertops, cabinets, literally everything besides the fridge. Then they asked us if we wanted everything for $1000. 

 If I wasn't having a heart attack before about spending an ungodly amount of money, I was now having a heart attack from saving myself $39,000. 

Now, we had no idea of the cabinets were going to fit in our new place. At Home Depot we were having to special order a bunch of cabinets to make them fit right, so we didn't have high hopes of the kitchen turning out the same as my design. I won't lie, I felt like I was giving up my dream kitchen, and part of me was little bummed, but that didn't last long when I thought of how much of a blessing was before us. So we scratched my idea, and all my plans, and felt horrible that the Home Depot gentleman spent 8 hours with me designing a kitchen that wasn't going to happen. (That was a hard phone call to make!) We were going to piece together our second hand kitchen, and hope for the best! 

It took hours to move everything to our house. Literally filled up my dads truck and trailer. We even ended up getting more then what we had agreed on. They had decided not to bother trying to sell some of the extra stuff that they had, so they just loaded it up onto the trailer with everything else and told us to enjoy. Seriously the nicest people ever, and so sweet! 

We got it home, and my dad and Josh unloaded everything, and it looked like this....

 Um, yeah. So we had no idea where to even begin! We didn't know which doors when with which cabinet, where to put anything, and so on. It was one huge mess.

We waited until the kids went to bed, took a long hard look at the mess, and started moving everything. I'm fairly good at puzzles, so as we were starting to move things, I thought why not just try to make my $40k kitchen out of our $1k second hand kitchen.

By the end of the night, which may or may not have been about midnight, we had this:

 Guys, this is almost the exact same set up as my $40k kitchen!!!! I know it might be a little hard to tell from my design pictures, but the ONLY thing that is majorly different is instead of having a wine rack on the left side of the double wall oven, I now have a big ol' pantry, which turns out I like much better!

The only thing that we have to add that we don't have is the window seat (our windows are huge and too close to the floor to put any cabinets in front of, so we'll have a nice little sitting area under the right window), the shelfs on the islands, and a tiny little shelf next to the corner cabinet. Other then that, everything fit perfectly AND we even had cabinets left over to use in other parts of the house.

Oak isn't entirely my thing, so yes, I am refinishing everything. The lower cabinets on the two islands are this fun vintage blue color:

And the cabinets on the wall are distressed white. The pictures don't do them justice, as the lighting is bad, but all the corners are distressed, giving it that old, weathered, scruffy look that I had wanted in the first place. These ones take FOREVER to do. I'll write a post on how to refinish these bad boys someday, but seriously, unless you LOVE the look (which I do), I wouldn't suggest it because it's A LOT of work! 

This is BEFORE in the previous owners home...

And this is after in our new home! 

So where are we now? Oy! Still a long way away! We needed to install the floor, and refinish the cabinets, and put in electricity and water... oh, and fill in a huge hole in the wall. See the wall on the right that all those cabinets are hanging from? There used to be a 8x8ft hole in the wall there.

 We're actually pretty close, even though it doesn't look like it. The doors are what take the longest in the refinishing project, but I figure I can live with open cabinets as long as I can get everything else done. So we need to finish the floor so we can install the cabinets on the bottom by the wall. We also need to build the walls around the islands so we can put the countertops on, and of course, finish the countertops which are all wood. We have then sanded, but not finished and sealed. There is also the window seat and the small shelf, but those can wait until everything else is done!

So there is our crazy awesome, blessed story of our second hand kitchen that is going to be way cooler then our $40k kitchen (if I do say so myself ;) ). God honestly blessed us beyond our imaginations with this thing, and I cannot wait until it is finished! The only thing left that we need is a fridge, but since we're not moved in upstairs, we're not too worried about it and I will keep my eyes peeled on craigslist in the mean time :)

We'll keep you posted and let you know when this bad boy is finished!