Jar Of Lemons Kitchen Renovation: Part 1

Hi, friends! Exciting news: we’re renovating the Jar Of Lemons kitchen! If you’ve been hanging around here lately, you may have noticed that I talked about it in the Easy Raspberry Breakfast Quinoa Bars (opens in a new tab) and Banana Chocolate Chip Baked Oatmeal Cups (opens in a new tab) posts. Now that we’ve made a little bit of progress, I thought I’d update you guys on how it’s coming along!

But first, some inspirational photos on the direction we want to go:

(photo cred: Pinterest (opens in a new tab))

We (Cody and I) had been thinking about renovating our kitchen since before we moved into the house. We had a contractor come take a look, but the quote he gave us would have pushed us to our limits budget-wise. That’s when decided to change directions and go DIY-style!

Now, I don’t know how to say this gently but…..well…it’s kind of  a big deal (Anchorman anyone? anyone?). Cody and I are literally the LEAST DIY/handy people on this planet, so the fact that we decided to jump into this is huge! And when I say jump into this, I mean that one day I spontaneously ordered everything and started tearing the kitchen apart before Cody even came home from work. Yeah, he wasn’t too happy about that.

But it did force us to finally get started on it because there’s no time like the present (Love youuuuu, Cody! Don’t be mad at me)! And now here we are, our kitchen is in shreds, and we’re so excited about what it’ll look like in (hopefully) a couple of months!

The Jar Of Lemons Kitchen Renovation Plan

We’re wanting to go with black cabinets on the bottom, white cabinets on top, butcher block countertops, and a white hexagonal backsplash. We will also be replacing the sink with a stainless steel drop-in, a new faucet, and removing the wine rack/shelf above the sink area. I’m thinking we might replace all of that with wood shelves? Not sure, but would love ideas from you guys on how to fill that space!

Here some current photos of the Jar Of Lemons kitchen renovation process. Emphasis on the word process! And no judgement on the mess, please 😉

This is what the kitchen looked like before we did ANYTHING to it:

Behind the island (not shown) is a long, empty wall. Since these photos were taken, we’ve painted all of the walls white, added the shelves you see in the first photo of this post on the empty wall, and have painted the bottom cabinets a matte black. <—— a much tougher process than one would think, but I’m happy to say we survived.

I realize that the following photos actually make our kitchen look WORSE than it did before we started this process, but I can assure you that it’s because it’s a total disaster as we’re very much under construction, in the process, and still attempting to live in it. Also, I didn’t even slightly try to clean things up before taking these photos. So….there’s that. At least we’re real about things here? Hopefully the final product will make it all worth it! 🙂

The kitchen has been a TON of work already, but I’m excited to get it done! And even though we have a long road ahead of us, I think it’ll be so worth it when it’s finished. Let me know if you guys have any ideas or suggestions!