But I now love my cute little kitchen.  The floors are no longer blue.  The countertop is all sparkly and clean, and I finally got my double sink.  I adore the Stonington Gray-painted walls, and my fresh clean-looking Snowfall White cabinets.  Plus all the other little things I did to make our kitchen feel like “us.”  I worked hard to make it pretty!  It’s now my happy place – many batches of brownies and cookies and other yummy things (made for the people I love) have emerged from this room.  And it’s where Sweetie and I convene each night after work, discussing our days while sitting across from one another at the island.

Let’s reminisce just a little, k?

Here’s where we started (image courtesy of the original house listing, not me!) with an ugly and rather greasy chair rail, ridiculous light fixtures, dirty cream coloured cabinets, strange gray trim, and a blue peel and stick floor…

Sweetie removed the rather random chair rail, and I painted the dickens out of my wee kitchen and we swapped out all the hardware and the obnoxious light fixtures, leaving us with this…

…which we lived with for quite a while (while I crazily stalked other people’s kitchens and planned and planned and planned some more.)

Then – happy day! – I laid a new kitchen floor.  Best.  Day.  Ever.

…and then (then!) we added new countertops and the fancy new double sink. Leaving us with our current happy (and pretty!) little kitchen…

Happy sigh.  :)

If we were planning to stay in the house longer, I would have put in a backsplash, probably in marble of some sort.  I’ve always adored FrecklesChick‘s lovely little kitchen, and I think a similar tile backsplash would have looked snazzy here.

But perhaps we’ll save all that for the next house.  :)  While I’m hoping that our next kitchen won’t be quite as disasterous as this one was when we moved in, we tend to buy houses with ugly kitchens.  It seems to be our (not at all intentional) “thing.”

So, just to recap (because I love a good Grand Finale!), this…

…became this…

…and this…

…turned into this…

Better eh?  I’d say that’s definite progress.  Here’s hoping the next family who lives in this house loves this little kitchen as much as I do!

And here’s looking forward to having a new kitchen to obsess about and pretty-up at our next home, wherever that may be.  Although I could really do without a blue floor this time.  (Just saying.)

The floor is its own separate debate (that I’ve already chatted about HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE just a little HERE too.)  The floor is indeed hideous, and soon needs to be replaced (sadly, teal-coloured 1980′s peel and stick tiles just aren’t my thing.)

But almost equally offensive are my old laminate countertops.  They’re warped.  They’re chipped.  They’re scorched in a couple of places.  They’re, um, blue.  From a distance they don’t look completely awful…

But once you get a little closer, the years of wear and tear (and overall blue-ness) becomes a little more apparent…

Yep.  Kinda gross.

In a perfect, countertop-abundant world, I would adore new Corian or Caesarstone countertops, or some other sort of composite material.  Similarly, granite would be fantastic.  And marble would be positively lovely!  Unfortunately my (rather frugal) bank account has a bit of a say in the matter, and is dictating my choices just a little.

I’ve always lived with laminate countertops.  My mom had them in our house growing up (and recently replaced her old laminate countertops with gorgeous new granite-look laminate counters.)  Every apartment and house I’ve lived in since (including this one obviously) has also had laminate counters.  And I DO like them – untrendy as they may be, they’re rather easy to care for (no sealing, no worrying about standing water or red wine…  install, and enjoy.  Simple!)  Of course I’d absolutely prefer a snazzy natural stone or one of the new composites (oh, Misty Carrera Caesarstone, how beautiful you are!) but from a financial and practicality standpoint, laminate is a far more appealing option.

And, all that said, I HAVE found a laminate option that I think I could live with.  It’s a granite-y laminate called Ivory Kashmire, and it’s made by those fine folk over at Formica.  On the tiny little chip I nabbed from Home Depot, it looks like this…

Which, I’m hoping in my kitchen, would look a bit like this (from the Lettered Cottage)…

Or like this (from Made By Girl)…

Pretty eh?  :)

My other option would be the super trendy (and lovely!) butchers block countertops.  Butchers blocks seem to require considerably more care than laminate counters.  There’s the sealing.  And the oiling.  And more oiling.  And the paranoia regarding standing water.  And the oiling.  And while treating wooden countertops once every few months doesn’t sound like a huge undertaking, I’ll forget.  Guaranteed.  And Sweetie will forget to wipe up water splashes.  Also guaranteed.  And then I’ll end up with watermarks or cracking or whatever normally happens to shamefully neglected butchers block countertops.  And then I’ll be sad.

But, they’re SO NICE.  See?  I want my kitchen to look like this (from the Marian House Book)…

…or like this (from the Mustard Ceiling)…

Love!

I may, in the end, very well end up with both in my kitchen – laminate on the countertops around my cupboards/sink, and butchers block on the island (where its much less likely to come into contact with water, and could look lovely leading into my living room!)  Time will tell.  Until then, I’ll likely continue to obsess over both.

Because that’s what I do.  It makes me sound a little crazy (but, in truth, it’s sorta fun.)

First, the colours I did not choose.  Our bedroom at our last house was a lovely shade of blue-gray.  I adored it.  Peaceful and serene and so pretty!  And I totally thought that a blue-gray hue was destined to make another appearance on our bedroom walls here in this house.  In particular, either Coventry Gray (which has always been my all-time favourite gray) or Stonington Gray (which is one shade lighter and beautifully graces the walls of my happy little kitchen.)

But when I tried both colours in large swatches in our bedroom, I wasn’t impressed.

Blah eh?  I mean, I LOVE both colours.  But they just looked a little lackluster in our bedroom.  A wee bit “meh”, perhaps.  I was sad.

But then – THEN! – I remembered Revere Pewter, another colour I’ve been in love with for eons and dying to use somewhere in this house.  And then I got all giddy and went completely insane and threw caution to the wind and hurried out to my nearest Benjamin Moore store for a full gallon of the glorious colour.  Yep.  Buying paint without first testing it on my walls is my definition of living dangerously.  I’m a rebel, I know.

But with a colour so lovely, how could things possibly go wrong?  Famous last words?  Nope!  Fabulous snap decision-making, I hope.  :)

(And, to my dear friends who know how I often agonize over paint colours – yes, that’s you Shawn – you should be rather impressed by my rather uncharacteristically quick paint colour decision making skills.)

I don’t have any in-progress shots to share at the moment, but here is the colour scheme (via Apartment Therapy) I’m going for…

…well, minus the nursery part.  There will be no crib in our room, and Sweetie would likely ixnay the pretty ruffly curtains, but I love the beigey-gray with the coral.

Yep.  That’s right.  I just admitted to loving coral.  Insanity eh?  The 80′s most definitely are back.  Minus the ginormous and absurd shoulder pads.  I hope.

What else do I love?  Coral and navy.  Swoon.  See?

I absolutely adore this bedroom from Centsational Girl.  I’m thinking that by adding navy to the coral, I’m semi-guaranteed that Sweetie will embrace my vision.  Afterall, nothing says “manly” like a little navy, non?

And can I just mention that I’d like these pillows (from Honey & Fitz) please?

Please please please?  Like, all of them?

So yes!  That’s the overall colour scheme I’m going for.  I think it’ll be pretty and fresh but still subdued enough to be sufficiently bedroom-ish.

Further bedroom-redo updates to follow!  Eventually.  (Since y’all now know how very very slowly I paint.)  ;)

The colour isn’t terrible.  It’s pea soup green, alright, but it’s not offensive pea soup.  It’s just not me.  Plus there are some big ol’ cracks in the plaster that need patching, and I don’t have the name/make of the current colour, so I’ve decided to use all that as an excuse (not that I’ve ever needed one) to paint the whole room in a colour that feels more us.  (That’s my logic at least.  :)  The room will probably either end up being either Stonington Gray (the same colour I already love in our kitchen) or the next colour down/darker on that same paint chip, Coventry Gray (which apparently reads quite blue, but I’m ok with that – I rather like blue-grays.)

Here are a few befores for you (note: our bedroom is tiny!  Most of these are taken either with my back up against the wall or standing out in the hallway.  Yup.  It’s small.  But we spend the majority of our day in the rest of the house, so a tiny place to sleep is a-ok with us!)

(See the hope chest in the corner?  That’s the one I’m not allowed to paint LOL.)  (Not that I would anyway…)  The little white attic door behind the hope chest is getting painted as well in whichever wall colour I choose.  While it’s super quaint having attic access behind the knee wall, I wouldn’t necessarily call that door a feature worth highlighting.  (Although the previous owners obviously did!)

And see that little wood door?

That there would be our closet.  Please note: the closet is about 3 feet wide on the inside.  In total.  And there is no walking-in.  Nope.  None at all.  Sigh.  The closet door will be getting a coat of Snowfall White paint (I painted the also-once-orangey-wood bedroom door when I painted the hallway and it’s sooo much better.)  I wish painting the door also meant more closet space…  At least it means prettier closet space, I suppose.

(Oh!  And the ugly white ceiling fan is getting swapped out too.)

Due to our (very) limited closet space, we bought big huge Ikea Hemnes dressers last summer.  (Remind me, some day, to tell you how much fun Sweetie had assembling these!)  Admittedly, they’re massive, but for some reason they don’t look out of place in our little room.

I’ll probably swap out the rug once the walls are repainted (this is an old beige shag rug I threw down when we moved, but I think it might work better in our dining room.) (Can you put a shag rug in your dining room?)  And the curtains will go (far far away.)

Of us all, I think Jacob is most excited about the room being painted.  While orange cats do look lovely in green rooms, he’s partial to gray, I think.

(Actually, I’m guessing he doesn’t really care.  So long as there’s a big comfy bed in the room, he’s a pretty happy cat.  Cats are kinda wishy-washy like that about paint.)  (I wish I was – it would mean a lot less painting for me.)  (Sigh…)

Yep.  Despite that the floor is still hideous (change coming soon!  I hope…) my kitchen makes me happy.  :)  Is it any wonder, then, that I’m mildly (ehem, majorly) obsessed with other 1940s kitchens?  Might I interest you in a peek into my kitchen world?  Let’s take a looksee at other older kitchens, via the good folk at Googlesearch…

I love this kitchen, with its old cupboards but modern stainless steel appliances, courtesy of Casapinka.

(And that floor makes me super happy too.  Oh!  And, in case you haven’t noticed it, looking all lovely back there in the background, just look at that SINK!  Sigh.  Goodness me…)

And check out Carolyns 1940′s kitchen makeover, via Apartment Therapy:

Love love love!  And the dark wood flooring kinda makes me want wood floors in my kitchen.  Again.  (I’m seriously never going to make a final decision regarding floors at this rate, you know.)

But I saved the best for last.  Are you ready for this?  Here’s my favourite of the bunch via The Home Project…

Oh swoon.  Do you see what I see?  Stainless steel countertops, the most beautiful marble and granite floor ev-ver AND lovely old original kitchen cabinets.  So perfect.  I want to sing to the radio (and dance just a little too) while scrubbing pots in THAT kitchen, please.

So there you go – my top three picks (for now) for older kitchens that have been reno-ed (but retain their original and awesome charm.)  Here’s hoping that one day someone finds my 1940s kitchen project just as inspiring!  Until then, I’m pretty darn pleased with it, at least.  (Just don’t look at my floor.)

The other day, I posted about how excited we were to have made a decision on flooring for our kitchen.  When you live in a house with blue 1980s-era peel and stick tile in your kitchen, the prospect of new flooring is a happy one indeed.  Here’s what we’ve decided on (with a Stonington Gray paintchip to represent our walls, and the countertop we’re considering too…)

And, just as a reminder of the current state of our kitchen, here’s what she looks like (with all her 1940s lovelieness)…

(In case you’re wondering, let’s consider this a stock image.  The mirror above the stove, as you may remember from earlier this week, is now above the fancy faux-fireplace in our living room.  And the pantry has had a little redo since too…  But it’s rather dreary here at the moment, and my kitchen wasn’t feeling particularly photogenic today [ie: I got super lazy and didn't do the dishes last night.]  Rest assured, though, it still sortof looks like this.  :)

Flooring chosen (and little happy dance danced), the folk at Urban Outfitters have now let me know that there’s something else my kitchen needs.  Look what I found while randomly wandering around the Urban Outfitters site the other night…

I won’t lie: I got super excited.  But just as I was about to hit the big blissful “BUY” button, I noticed the following words (in mocking red print): Back Order.  Until June.  And then I got super sad.  Grumble.  (Perhaps I’m not the only one who feels that a cheery little rug could be the perfect companion for a happy little kitchen.)  Nonetheless (and because I’ve been thinking about it nonstop for the last few days) (some people think about politics in their spare time, others worry about global warming…  Me?  I obsess over rugs) (well, and global warming) I’m pretty certain I’ll just give in and buy the backordered little rug and wait (somewhat) patiently until June.  June is only two months away afterall.  And that’s only 60-ish days.  I can wait that long.  Really.  :)

My other (waaay more extravagant) kitchen-want of the moment?  I want a Tivoli.  SO BAD.  See the spot above my sink (where the silver radio resides currently)…

…that there spot would really like a Tivoli please.  :)  The little silver radio is perfectly functional, but just imagine how lovely this would look in its place…

…or this sexy silver-faced version (dear silver Tivoli, I love you)…

Oooh.  Or this one…

…and, well, I know I currently have nothing yellow in my kitchen, but c’mon – how ridiculously cheery is THIS…

…and don’t even get me started on the blue one.  (Oh how I adore the blue one!)

Admittedly, it’s not the most practical purchase ever.  Ok, it’s not a practical purchase AT ALL.  Really, who needs a $200-ish radio for their kitchen.  Probably (alright, definitely) not me.  And I will likely never push the big fat “BUY” button for this purchase (since, well, I could floor most of my kitchen for that same $200.  Or feed Sweetie and me for a month.  Or repaint my entire second floor. Etc.)  But a girl can dream, non?

So there you have it!  My mid-week roundup of the stuff I’d really like to put in my kitchen.  We could seriously make this a weekly event, I think.  The internet is evil.  But so good.  Kind of like poutine – I know quite well that a big bowl of french fries smothered in gravy and cheese is hardly a healthy food, but sometimes poutine just calls to me.  And I can’t resist.  The internet is the same.  Minus the clogged arteries and expanding waistline.

…it was love.  :)  Twu wuv, in fact (as the Bishop in the Princess Bride would have declared.)  The gray walls.  The dark countertops and lovely marble backsplash.  The white cupboards.  The wood floors.  Sigh…  This is the image that inspired the gray/white/red colour scheme in our current kitchen.

And so, my obsession with that lovely pic in mind, I’m not sure why it took me so long to realize that my own kitchen could benefit from wood floors.  Maybe it was the presumed cost.  Maybe it was the seemingly non-diy-ness of installing hardwood.  I dunno. But the thought of putting some sort of wood-type floor in my kitchen had somehow completely evaded me.

Until this weekend.

But first, let’s backtrack to 2004 for a moment, shall we?  :)

Our last house had ugly flooring.  Uuuuugly.  Like, possibly even worse than the 1980s-blue-peel-and-stick tile situation here in our current house.  Really.  It was ba-ad.  Our old kitchen was home to brown 1970s peeling linoleum.  Need a visual?  Prepare yourself…

Yeppers.  We actually bought a house with a kitchen that looked like THAT.  We’re brave, brave souls.

We lived with that floor for over five years.  Until about a month before we listed that house, in fact (at which point we jumped into crazy full-fledged flooring mode.)  Because the flooring was SO ridiculously old, we didn’t even consider taking it up.  Instead, we put a tile-look floating floor (by Allure) right on top.  And it looked great (and, also importantly, was semi-simple to install ourselves!)  Here’s the (rather grainy – sorry ’bout that) after (from the night we moved out)…

We also de-wallpapered and re-painted EVERY SQUARE INCH of that house.  (But that’s a whole other story.)

And so (fast forwarding back to 2012), it suddenly dawned on me the other day that the answer to our current flooring woes might be to install the same type of floating floor directly over the blue-tile-disaster that currently resides in our kitchen.  A quick trip to Home Depot later, and I was sold.  We will again be making friends with Allure Trafficmaster Resilient Flooring, this time in a Hickory-plank finish.  I’m quite excited about the reunion. :)

Here is the floor we’ll be going with…

…along with the sample laminate countertop I’m considering and a Stonington Gray paint chip I wrestled up from my ginormous pile o’ paintchips (it’s already on my walls and I adore it.)  Not too shabby eh?  And perhaps even reminiscent of my inspiration pic.  Should we look at that again?  Let’s look again.  :)

Sigh.  It’s so lovely.  :)  And, well, since I’m a Google-search/Pinterest junkie, here are a couple more pics I found of the exact same Allure Hickory flooring in other people’s homes…

This one is from a super cute blog called Creative Little Daisy:

And then there’s this bathroom renovation from Southern Hospitality Blog…

And here’s a look at this same flooring in (Never Home) Maker‘s (originally carpeted – ick!) kitchen (and it looks lovely!):

Yep.  I think Allure Trafficmaster Resilient Flooring may again find its way into my home.  Will it be a fun little DIY jobbie?  Likely not.  It’s somewhat easy to install, but getting it right is a wee bit finicky.  It’ll be worth it, though.  I hope.  My kitchen, sans 1980s-blue-peel-and-stick flooring, will likely be a much prettier place.  :)

PS – if you’re not familiar with my Princess Bride reference above, please click here for one of my all-time favourite movie moments! (Skip to 1:25 if you want to get straight to the punchline… although the entire wedding scene makes me giggle.)  (Mawwage.)  (Teehee.)

Just to show progress to-date, here are a few befores (photos stolen directly from the house listing when we bought it) and after-ishes (the -ishness because there’s still so much left to do.)

Before, with a seemingly pointless and rather greasy (blek) chair rail that ran around the room and dirty blue walls:

After – chair rail removed, ugly light fixture replaced and everything (ceiling, walls, cupboards, windows, and trim) repainted (the walls with BM Stonington Gray, and the cupboards and trim and such with BM Snowfall White) (it’s close-ish to the white of my white appliances, just a wee bit creamier):

Before (I love that they attempted to stage the island for photos, but left the ginormous bag of dog food sitting out on the floor [next to the fridge] in the background…):

That's one very whirly fan!

After (sans massive bag of kibble, and with lights swapped out for ones that actually match and aren’t icky):

Sweetie chose the pendant for over the island. He did good eh?

Before (with coffeemaker perched on top of the microwave on the too-small kitchen cart):

Nothing screams "lots of counter space!" to a potential home buyer like stacking your appliances...

After (with a properly fitting kitchen cart [best kijiji score ever!] and minus the random appliances plugged into the stove) (although I did forget to move the giant pile of mail off the island… just ignore that k?):

I'll eventually get around to painting the wood beam around the island - promise!

Much better eh?  I like to think so.  :)  Here are a few details too…

The view looking toward the front door, with my pretty little painted piano stool (and that big pile of mail again – just keep ignoring that…)

The mirror over my stove is one of my favouritest HomeSense buys ever!  And I love having a mirror over my stove (made possible, of course, by the fact that no one in the past 70-ish years has bothered to install a proper [and, um, I think mandatory] range hood above it.  I won’t tell if you don’t.  :)  I’m sure I’ll go through gallons of Windex trying to keep it clean, but I don’t care.  It’s a little unconventional and rather pretty and I love it.  :)

A LOT of people told me to remove the 1940s-ish scalloped edge above my sink when we moved into the house, but I absolutely love it and just ignored them all (those scallop-hating sillyheads.)

I replaced all the old black pulls and hinges on the cupboard doors with pretty brushed nickle ones when I repainted the cupboards last summer.  These have just a tiny little bit of detail.  I quite like them.  :)

My ikea Grundtal rail holds my grandmother’s old measuring spoons and cups (and some newer ones too.)  I love having these out.  They’re old and remind me of her.  The super cute polka dot bowls belong to the cats.

And tada – there you have it!  The prettier parts of my kitchen.  It’s not at all perfect, but I like it.  :)

And now (insert dramatic: dun dun dun…) for some ugliness (and there’s lots)…

Our countertops are archaic.  And scratched.  And pitted.  And worn.  And kinda blue.  Ish.

Ack eh?  We’ll be replacing them at some point, but I haven’t yet decided with what.  I’m kinda liking the look of the ikea butchers’ block countertops at the moment, but I’m a wee bit worried about watermarks and stains and maintenance and such (even though people who have them tend to say they’re awesomely durable.)  That said, the butchers’ block countertops aren’t hugely expensive (I think they’re even cheaper than laminate) so it wouldn’t be a huge investment…  Planning a trip to ikea very soon (yay!) so I might know more about beautiful wooden countertops shortly.  :)

And then, once we get new countertops, we can also get a new sink and faucet.  Oh how I miss my double sink.  And my pullout faucet.  Lots.  And lots.

Oh.  And then there’s my floor…

Yup, it’s pretty snazzy.  In case you can’t quite tell, I’ve got old peel-and-stick tiles, on top of old peel-and-stick tiles, on top of something else, with maybe something else underneath.  And, sadly, the floor will likely be the last thing I replace in the kitchen.  While I (at least) have a vague idea of what I’d like to do for the countertops, I have no clue what to install on the floor (and whatever I put on the kitchen floor will continue through the hallway, since that old brown carpet is ug-ly.  Times ten.  Which also means it has to match the old hardwood in my living room and dining room, the faux-tile linoleum in my loo, and the wood-look laminate flooring in my sunroom.)  (Did I mention I inherited a hodge-podge of flooring?)  I’m sort of waiting to hear how Sherry and John (a la Young House Love) (hi Sherry and John!) make out with their cork floors (they’re currently mid-amazing kitchen reno) (nothing like using other bloggers as flooring guinea pigs, eh?) to decide whether cork could be an option.

So there you go!  Kitchen tour chez Joy.  :)  Still lots left to do, but it’s come quite a ways so far (at least I think it has.)  I’ll keep you posted on the countertop situation.  :)  And once I’m done stalking YHL’s kitchen reno, I’ll let you know if cork flooring might be in my future too.  For now, my kitchen is at least fairly functional and pretty pretty-ish.  Just don’t stare directly at the floor or countertops.  :)