completion!

The kitchen is finished! We started with these three "before" pictures below:

1. Standing in our "kitchen" and looking towards what is now our kids "play area"

 2. Half of the kitchen- see the half brick wall and boarded up window to prevent thieves from entering?

3. Other half of the kitchen, where our cabinets have now been installed.

 Step 1- clear everything out and prepare for paint!

Step 2- knock out brick wall and remove planks on window.

Step 3- While we waited for the landlord to move his bed on out, we began the painting process.

Low ceilings are great for painting

Step 4- build new wall. Due to the low ceilings and the beam along the top of the wall that you can see in the above picture, we were unable to hang cupboards, unless we wanted the bottom of the hanging cabinet to pretty well sit on the top of our counter top (this tells you how low the ceiling actually is). Now we have eliminated the beam and can hang the cabinets 6 inches higher. Precious space.

Painting completed on the other half of the kitchen. Here you can see our fridge, food cabinet, and microwave. The microwave sat here temporarily for a while. This is because our kitchen has just one electrical outlet, as you can see on the wall there just above the microwave. Kitchens really need more than just one outlet. Thank goodness for extension cords!

Step 5- Hang cupboards! My brother Joel was able to help Nathan hang the kitchen cupboards. Again, notice how low those cabinets would be if they hung 6 inches closer to the countertop! haha! Oh my.

Step 6 is not shown here. It involved getting "water in" to the sink and "water out" from the sink, as there was no plumbing in this room when we moved in. We love our new kitchen! It's not completed yet, small things like electrical outlets have yet to added, but for now, it's usable, easy, and we love it!!!

And the kids love their play area too. :)