The Kitchen, Part I

In case you're new to our family, we just moved ourselves down to Mississippi. We bought a house built in the 1940s that we really, really love. It's been kept up pretty well but there are things about it that we have changed or are desperately wanting to change. I knew the first thing I'd want to do something about was the kitchen:

 Things I love about it:

 1. Beautiful hardwood floors

 2. Spacious, lots of counter space

 3. Windows above the sink that look out onto things that are GREEN (we lived within centimeters of   our neighbors before this)

Things I am not so crazy about:

1. Striped wall paper

2. Gold hardware

3. Navy blue Formica counter tops

4. The overall scream of "I'm from the 80s and lovin' it!" 

For about 4 years now, I've been head over heels in love with a certain kitchen that I saw in the now out of print Cottage Living. As soon as I saw it, I knew that it was my dream kitchen and someday I was going to renovate a kitchen to look just like it. Hold your breath, because here it is!

Isn't it lovely and cozy and modern all at the same time?

So, being the insane people we are... we started to renovate this kitchen the day after we moved in. No, I'm not kidding. I am an instant gratification sort of person. The first thing we did was remove all.the.wallpaper. Andrew's sweet, sweet parents were there for this incredibly long job. I'm telling you these people must have super glued the paper to the wall. We found some helpful tips in removing wall paper:

1. Use a score over the wallpaper

2. Spray liberally with a wallpaper removal spray AND let set for 15 minutes (I hear you can also use a fabric softener)

3. Use a scraper and/or fingers....

4. Pray. And turn on some music to take your mind off of what you're doing.

You can see Andrew's dad in the picture below finishing up the last corner. This was probably around 10:30 pm that night... we had been doing this all day. Andrew is starting to take off the cabinets because we were also going to paint the cabinets that night, which I will tell you about soon in Part II! And just to give you a little cliff-hanger... it goes all wrong.