Yay! We finally renovated our kitchen!

But before we get to the nitty gritty, it’s backstory time: The hubs and I have lived in the house for a while and along with our master bedroom (see our renovations of that here & here) the kitchen was my least favorite room.

Also note: my mother-in-law owned this home before us. She did her own renovations to the kitchen, which from the stories, she helped it a LOT.

However, the wallpaper & flooring did not fit my decorating style and aesthetic AT ALL.

Well, one Saturday I woke up really early and could not get back to sleep. I just kept checking out the wallpaper in our kitchen. I noticed it had started peeling in some places. And well, I started thinking to myself, I bet I can take it all off!

A Pinterest search ensued & led me to believe it would be easy peasy. HA! Just like with our popcorn ceilings in the master, it was NOT.

I figured out I was in over my head about 15 minutes in. But I kept going because at that point I had pulled a lot of wallpaper down.

Thankfully, when the hubs got home, he laughed at me, then proceeded to help me.

I wish I had a better photo of the ‘before’, but I had tunnel vision when I began the project & did not think about it.

Anyways, to get the wallpaper off: take down the ‘pretty’ layer first. There will be a second under layer left on the wall. I got this off by mixing warm water and fabric softener in a spray bottle, then spraying it directly onto the paper. Rub it in if you must & let sit for a few minutes. Then, take a scraper to start removing from the wall. From there, you can pull it off in sections. Some paper may be really stuck to the wall, if this happens, just soak it & scrape.

It actually was not as bad as I had originally thought with the help of someone else. But it did take almost the entire day to finish.

After this success, we decided we ‘might as well’ get ride of the flooring too.

Let me tell you about the flooring – it was not just one layer of vinyl tiles. It was actually two layers: the top layer was thin, cheap vinyl & the bottom layer was large, thick, industrial-type vinyl.

We knew what we were in for as we had already tried to get them up in the laundry room.

What worked for us:  a small tile scraper (about 4″ wide) with a long handle attached (about 4 or 5 foot long). And lots of upper body strength.

Sidenote: if you have old tile in your home, research to make sure it’s not asbestos!

Getting the flooring up took the rest of the night. It was messy and hard work.

Then on Sunday, we painted and laid the new laminate wood flooring. You’ll notice it is the same stuff we used in our master. We had some leftover, it’s easy to lay, & I love it, so why not?

We also added wainscoting to the bare portions of the cabinets to add a little flare.

I think it turned out amazing. There are still things I want to do (counter tops!), but I am so happy with the new kitchen.

Let me know what you think! (Also, sorry for the messiness in every photo)