If you read our post a few weeks ago about what our kitchen looked like before, you know it was small, dark, and outdated. Thankfully we had a large unused room in our downstairs that was perfect to completely relocate our kitchen and create a much larger kitchen that we could customize to fit our needs. Today I’m going to share that kitchen we created, because it is DONE!!! I will also share the rough cost breakdown and what products we used, as well as discuss what we DIY’d and what we hired out. It’s been a long TEN MONTHS of working on this project and we are in love with the results.
Click here to see the before post of our kitchen including our plans and a small mood board, and here to see our entire house as it was when we first moved in, as well as a whole-home to-do list!
Our old kitchen 
Our old kitchen 
Our old kitchen 
Our old kitchen 
Our previous layout, showing the kitchen, left, with a large opening to a much larger room behind it and bedrooms on the right
Our kitchen was a small galley kitchen in the middle of our home with no windows and no room to expand it due to a load bearing wall, so we completely relocated it to the other side of that wall (and made the existing space part of our dining room). We were nervous to do this at first due to cost, but ultimately because we didn’t have to do much plumbing relocation (it had a shared wall with the old kitchen), it really wasn’t that difficult. We did, however, have to frame in the new room as it had previously been open completely to the hallway leading to the back bedrooms/bathrooms downstairs. My husband did this himself, after we had a contractor come out and look at our plans, confirming they were structurally safe for our house and made sense for our kitchen.
We decided to go with Axstad IKEA kitchen cabinets as well as IKEA hardware and install them ourselves to save some money. I loved how customizable the IKEA cabinets were, and used the IKEA Kitchen Planner tool to create our entire kitchen. Our old cabinets were cheap, outdated and wrecked, so we rented a dumpster and thoroughly enjoyed demoing our previous kitchen (though I was pregnant at the time, so didn’t get to do much of the heavy lifting).
Before we could install cabinets, we wanted to update the flooring downstairs to match the laminate upstairs. We chose the Pergo Waterproof in Amber Chestnut which we LOVE. We have the non-waterproof variety upstairs and it’s held up great and is beautiful. It took a few months to get all of the flooring done, so in the meantime we hired out an electrician to add six recessed lights (we used these canless ones), as well as relocate some outlets and move the outlet receptacle for the stove/oven. We hired this out because my husband is not an electrician, and I’m too scared of fires or my husband getting electrocuted to let him do it himself! We also hired out relocating our AC vents to make sure our kitchen was well-ventilated and cool.
We ordered brand new KitchenAid appliances and then came the exciting (and tedious) task of assembling and installing walls of cabinetry. Y’all this was when I started to get really anxious to be done, because I could SEE it turning into a kitchen and I couldn’t wait to fill up all of these cabinets with our things. This is also when things stalled out a bit. We ended up having to wait quite a while for our new Allen + Roth blushing ivory quartz countertops to be installed due to some scheduling errors, but when they were done they were glorious! My husband did the final plumbing changes in the days leading up to their installation, and when they were done we could finally use our kitchen! Filling our cabinets (and then re-arranging them a million times) is the best part, no?
We went back and forth for literally months debating what kind of backsplash to put in there. I’m a classic white subway tile fan, but my husband was worried our kitchen would be a sea of white and look to sterile. We compromised by going with white subway tile and a dark, warm gray grout to break it up and we both love it. We had planned on doing this ourselves but mama was getting impatient and my husband was working so we had a family friend do the tile job for us.
Once the tiling was done, it was on to finishing touches. We hung the range hood (from IKEA), and DIY’d some wood-stained shelves to go over the sink. We repainted the ceiling, touched up the wall paint and caulked all of our edges. We can finally call our kitchen DONE, and it feels good. It took us approximately four months longer than we anticipated (but in our defense, there was a global pandemic and a newborn really throwing off our plans), but we stayed within our budget and ended up with something we can love for a long time. You’ll notice I originally mentioned I dreamed of having a kitchen island, but we just weren’t sure it would fit in this space. We are still toying with the idea of adding one later, but for now want to live with our kitchen as it is.
Let’s all just take a minute to marvel in her glory, shall we?
Cost Breakdown
If you’re interested, or planning your own kitchen renovation, I’ve included what we spent on most of the products and services we used.
- Lumber & Drywall for framing (done by hubby) $200, estimated
- Dumpster rental $750 ($350 initial then $250 for each additional month, prorated at the end)
- Hiring AC specialist to move vents $500
- Hiring electrician to install canless recessed lights and move other electrical outlets as needed $1900
- Flooring (note: this was for my husband to install through our entire downstairs) $4785
- Cabinets and hardware, and range hook from IKEA $7448
- Plumbing (materials only, work done by hubby) $50, estimated
- Quartz countertops with installation $3120
- Stainless steel KitchenAid range, refrigerator and dishwasher $4597 (we did take advantage of a Labor Day sale I believe)
- Backsplash materials & labor $750
- DIY shelves, paint, caulk $74
Total spent $24,274
Our goal was $25K, but we left some wiggle room to spend up to $30K in event of any mistakes or forgotten items. I’m sure I’ve left out a hardware store trip or two, so in total it was probably closer to $25,000. For reference, the quote we got from a contractor, which did not include flooring throughout the downstairs and did not include our appliances was over $25,000, so I think we saved close to $10K doing a lot of it ourselves.
I hope y’all have enjoyed touring our new kitchen, which we looooovvveeee so, so much (did I say that already?). We have many, many more projects in our future, and are currently in the planning stages of another major layout change so keep an eye out for that soon!
This post is not sponsored, these are just products I love and recommend and would use again.