Home Renovation: The Kitchen (Part 1)

In the fall of 2012 we purchased a home.  At the WORST time possible... we work in education so it was the start of our school year, I was 9 months pregnant, we were potty training our 3 year old... why not heap a home renovation on top of that chaos.  :)  For some reason this is how all life transitions go for Lenny and Jenny.  Fast and all at the same time!  We had been praying about the right house for awhile but were not actively looking.  We knew the neighborhood we liked and that we would be looking for a fixer-upper.  Lenny was in Mexico on a missions trip at the time and I was home busying myself on the internet, when I found it!  The perfect fixer-upper right down the street from the apartment we had been living in.  I quickly made an appointment with a realtor for the day Lenny was to return.  We went, we looked, we prayed, and the next thing we knew there was a sold sign in the front yard... It was ours!  

Now what... the home was a foreclosure, so just about every room in the house was a project.  We decided to tackle the most important project first... the kitchen!  Lenny watched hours and hours of home renovation shows, and I spent hours and hours on Pinterest and Houzz.  Now because this was our first home we were extra eager and energized by the process... every date night that year ended walking the aisles at Lowe's or sipping coffee with a piece of graph paper.

We are often asked where we started, given we were gutting the house entirely.  For the main level I started with these two pictures from Pinterest, a color pallet and space we loved.  Now on to the demo...  (to be continued).

Light cabinets, dark granite, gray walls, mosaic backsplash..

The Pink was quickly nixed, but we stuck with a color palette of oranges and blues.