There has been a lot happening in the kitchen, besides cooking…
obviously, because I don’t do that…

Here is our kitchen on the day we closed on the house.
I love it. We love it. But we want to make it our own.

I’ll start with the most weird obvious thing in the kitchen.
Yep, that’s a huge hole in the wall.
We aren’t sure what it’s all about, but after much speculation and
conversations with our realtors, we think the previous owners had a beverage fridge in there.
I, at first, would have loved to put another beverage fridge in there,
and we even looked and looked for one.
No luck. The size of the opening was very odd and those things are expensive!

Kenley had a hay day when we first moved in. She couldn’t reach the door handles yet,
so she used this awkward opening as her own, personal door to the food.
Obviously, that got old real quick.
Greg did an awesome job patching it up with dry wall.

Our walls are tricky, too. They are all textured, so to create just enough texture to match wasn’t easy.
He pretty much rocks and you can’t even tell there was a gaping hole there,
unless you’re really looking for it.

Moving on to another part of our pantry… the door.
I cannot even begin to explain how much I loathe this door.
I’m sorry if you have a pantry door like this and/or love it,
I’m not trying to step on any toes here, but it’s just not my style.
So much so, that when Celeste was here to visit, she immediately made a comment
about how she just couldn’t see me liking it… without even knowing just how much I hated it!
My friends know me.

I was actually surprised to see a similar door installed on a recent episode of
Cousins on Call (one of my fave shows by the way… how can you not love these guys?).
I started to second guess myself and thought that maybe it wasn’t all THAT bad…
but nope. I still dislike it (a lot).

Like everything, doors are not cheap, so I thought about alternatives.
I got opinions of friends, did some research, etc. and decided
we were going to paint the glass with chalkboard paint,
until we stumbled upon this little gem… chalkboard contact paper.
We thought, for $7.50, we could give it a whirl and if it didn’t work, we weren’t out a ton of money.

It wasn’t super easy to put on, but we did it and it looks great!
I cured the chalkboard twice by completely covering with chalk and wiping down with a dry paper towel.
I. am. obsessed.
I love it!

Lastly… sorry, this has turned into quite the post, we replaced our island counter.
This was one of the things I wasn’t in love with, but I didn’t dislike it as much as the door.
I just always thought the counter looked too small on top of the island,
and I wasn’t a fan of the cut… triple pencil is the technical name.

We posted this puppy on Craigslist and in 12 hours it was sold.
I could go on and on about how much I love Craigslist, but I’ll save that for another day.

We decided to go with a butcher block style island and purchased the NUMERÄR countertop from IKEA.
Greg cut it to size and sanded the two edges that he cut.
We love it!

There are certain things that keep reminding me that we aren’t the first owners of this house,
but the more we do, the more I really feel like we are making this house our home.

So, that’s what’s cookin’! We hope to keep improving it!