Kitchen Spring Cleaning

Thursday I spent the majority of the day spring cleaning my kitchen. I only got done about 3/4 of what I wanted to get done, but I already feel so much better! We had alot of clutter in our cabinets and they were not very functional so that is where we spent most of the day.
One of the first things I did was clean out our cabinet where we had been storing our plastic grocery bags. I literally had a whole cabinets of nothing but plastic bags. Thanks to Pinterest I found the idea of storing them in an empty wipe container. I put about 50 grocery bags in the wipe container and saved the rest of the bags in the attic for when we have yard sales this summer.

After

Before

Now I had freed up an entire cabinet for more storage! We decided to put our microwave in our largest cabinet and run the cord through the bottom to the nearest outlet because it was taking up a ton of counter space and we don't use the microwave alot. It's not the most convenient place, but for as much as we use it it will be just fine. I am trying to declutter as much as possible while also deep cleaning because I like things to be simple and functional. I like to know that everything has a place and if I can't find a place for it chances are it needs to go!

Before: Everything out of our cabinets!

After

Then, kitchen spring cleaning turned into kitchen reno! I've been wanting to tear down the wallpaper in our kitchen for a long time because it was just not my style. Minus the new dishwasher we hadn't made any changes to our kitchen since we moved in two years ago. So, yesterday I was at the point of either washing down the wallpaper walls or just tearing the wallpaper off. I decided on the latter because it was already starting to peel off in spots. As I began to tear it off I realized that the wallpaper had been put in before the cabinets were even installed so it had been up for about 13-14 years! 

Wallpaper gone! 

Once I got that wallpaper down my gears started turning. I could look at my kitchen now as a blank slate. I sent a picture of my now bare kitchen to Leah at Grace Lee Cottage because she has an amazing eye for home renovations and decor! We also have the same taste in that area so I knew she would have good ideas. After talking with her I have decided to paint the cabinets white and change out the hardware, add beadboard wallpaper under the cabinets (I will probably paint above the cabinets with a light gray I have left over from when we painted our bedroom), take down the beam going across in front of the sink and add shelves instead, and paint the countertops a darker color and replace the sink faucet. This will definitely take time because I rarely have a full day to devote to something, but I'm just keeping the end goal in mind! Eventually, I would like to replace our fridge and range with stainless steel and replace our laminate floor with something else, but I think with just a little paint and wallpaper this kitchen will get a major face lift! :)

Under Construction:
Top cabinet doors removed, taped, sanded, and ready to be primed
 and beam removed above sink
. I still have to remove some wallpaper scraps up top,
 but just focusing on cabinets right now!

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