Small Changes, Big Results. Our Kitchen Reno, So Far.

My wife and I bought our first house in early 2024, and were very excited about getting to make the space into what we wanted. Up until then, we had spent our adult lives renting, which meant that apart from putting up a few picture frames, we basically couldn't make any changes to the existing layout of our living quarters. No paint, no wallpaper, no holes, etc.

So, when the time came where we were ready to buy a house, we hit the ground running looking at places. If we could find a place within our price range, that was just how we wanted it, with no work needing to be done - great! But, we were very aware that finding such a house would be a miracle. The reality would be that we'd have to find somewhere that needed some work, and that was fine with us.

After seeing many houses over the course of a few months, we came upon the right one for us. It was a mid-1970s townhouse that stayed in the mid 1970s. After we toured the house and had an inspector check it out, we confirmed that the house's structure, and general layout were to our liking, but the cosmetics certainly were not. But, hey! We came into this process knowing we'd likely need to do some work, and to be honest, my wife and I actually enjoy a bit of DIY. So, we bought it.

As with most DIY projects, I would recommend thinking about what it is that you want before just charging into it head first without a plan, especially if it's a larger, more permanent project like a part of your house. Don't want to spend all that time, energy, and money only to realize soon afterwards that actually, you really did want that light to be on the other side of the room.

So, before we got going on stuff in the house, can you guess what we did? That's right, we simply lived in the house for a while, and thought about what kind of changes we'd want to make to what part of the house. We also noted down problem areas that we could tackle first to improve our day-to-day before going into a larger beautifying project, that didn't actually change how we lived in the space.

Which brings me to the kitchen.

Very quickly after moving in, we realized that the kitchen's layout was generally fine, but had a couple major flaws that would actually injure us. Nothing serious, but as far as I know, your living space shouldn't injure you at all. So, we jumped on these issues right away.

"What were these issues?", I hear you ask. Well, let's start with seeing the kitchen.

The original kitchen

At first glance, it may seem pretty okay, apart from the dated style (we are planning to eventually update it all), but, by living in this space, we quickly realized that there were two key locations that had to change.

1) At the bottom of the image, you can see the stove on the right and a small countertop space on the left. This picture was taken from one of the two entryways into the kitchen that allow us to pass through the space. Unfortunately, due to the placement of the stove and the counter, it left juuust enough space for a person to pivot their hips and get through. But, if going too fast and/or not pivoting enough, you get jabbed by the countertop corner. Not ideal.

2) At the far end of the kitchen, just before crossing over into the dining room, the countertop and the upper cabinets pop out. Just in general, this small pop out blocked a bit of sunlight, so the kitchen was a bit darker, but the main issue was that while working at that section of the countertop (often doing food preparation), we found ourselves smacking our heads on the upper cabinet, either as we bent down to cut veggies, or as we stood up straight after cutting. Again, not ideal.

So, what do we do?

Honey! Get the saw!

After a quick saw here, and one or two yanks there, the pop out countertop and top cabinet were gone!

Oooh, the satisfaction of tearing it out after smacking your head one too many times!

And turned out that the counter next to the stove was actually made up of two cabinets loosely screwed together. So, after separating them and cutting the countertop in half, and reusing one of those cabinets to extend the main countertop, this is what we have!

So, just like that, with just a couple of small changes, we've gone from this original layout that caused movement and food prep issues, as well as pain...

The original kitchen layout

... to this layout, which allows better movement within the kitchen as well as into the adjacent hallway and dining room, a bit more natural light entering the kitchen, and additional counter space in the main food prep area.

The kitchen layout after the slight counter alterations

As exciting as it was to have a more functional kitchen for our daily lives, the work didn't stop there.

I'm sure that you've noticed the rather large gap in the middle of our cabinetry. What to do with that? Well, I'd like to point out (in case it hasn't already crossed your mind), that this kitchen has never had a dishwasher.

GASP! Oh, the humanity!

Jokes aside, not having a dishwasher - while not the end of the world - is something we greatly missed. It was a great time saver that we had when we were renting.

So, the next task was fairly obvious.

Out with the saw, and in with the hammer!

While neither my wife or I had ever actually installed a dishwasher before, let alone in a kitchen without the base infrastructure (dishwasher power and plumbing), we were lucky that my father-in-law has done this a number of times.

So, with his help, and after some bashing of the bottom cabinetry, we cleared a proper space for the dishwasher to slot into.

We got power running to the machine's newly appointed space and got the sink's plumbing ready as well.

We also made a couple of tweaks to the existing countertop, such as adding a support piece to the countertop's underside to give the dishwasher something more to grip into. We brought back the side cabinet (see countertop extension above) that we then properly connected to the rest of the countertop and existing bottom cabinets, and voila! We now have a dishwasher; something this house never had before. And you know what, you wouldn't even know it.

So, that's the progress on our kitchen. It wasn't a huge job where we gutted the whole kitchen and started from scratch. It was a series of small changes that amounted to large results for those living in the space (ie: us!).

I wanted to share our process on the kitchen to show that if money, energy, and/or time are short, it doesn't mean you have to do it all at once, nor does it have to all be done right away. Over a span of about six months, we've made our current kitchen work for us, and it's allowed us to test out this (slightly) different layout. It's not perfect, and we already have a list of things we'd like to improve when the full kitchen reno comes, but until then, these small (and cheap) changes have already made a world of difference in our day to day lives.

At the time of writing, we have not started on these next steps, but we are discussing making more small changes, this time in the way of cosmetics as opposed to function. We're wondering about using countertop paint to cover up the current (ugly) pink-coloured countertop pattern. We're also talking about trying out renter-friendly peel and stick backsplash to add some texture and colour to the space. This would still keep it cheaper while allowing us to try new looks for the space without dedicating so much time, energy, and money to something we might like.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading through our journey so far!