Mini Kitchen Remodel — New lighting makes a WORLD of difference!

In addi­tion to all the other changes around here in the past month (you know, like new babies and start­ing Kinder­garten), we’ve been in the midst of some home improve­ment projects! As a Lowe’s Cre­ative Ideas Blog­ger, I was given the chal­lenge to upgrade the kitchen. There was MUCH that could have been improved upon, but two things we’ve been dying to do is get a new sink & redo the light­ing! And, oh my, how new kitchen light­ing makes a world of dif­fer­ence! Now, this might not look like any­thing spec­tac­u­lar you, but it is so, SO much bet­ter than what it looked like before. When we bought our house a lit­tle over two years ago, it needed work. No crazy major fixes, just lots of aes­thetic things as just about every sin­gle thing in the house was the most basic builder-grade. We’ve slowly been mak­ing updates. So, here’s what the kitchen looked like when we bought it: After some paint, some appli­ances (rather impor­tant ), new tile floor­ing, an island, and removal of that awful swag light, here is what the kitchen looked like ear­lier this month: I don’t love our cab­i­nets at all, but haven’t decided what color would be best for refin­ish­ing them. Plus, I knew that with a new baby, a com­plete cab­i­net refin­ish project would have been too big for us right now. We also toyed with the idea of get­ting new coun­ters, but that would have eaten up our entire bud­get and there were other, more func­tional changes to be made. It might be hard to tell from the pic­tures, but one MAJOR issue in the kitchen was the light­ing at the coun­ters. Because the only real light source was the large flu­o­res­cent box in the mid­dle, I was always cast­ing a shadow over the coun­ters when working/cooking. It made every­thing seem so dark, espe­cially in the win­ter. Bleh! And, try­ing to pho­to­graph stuff for the blog? Super dif­fi­cult. We des­per­ately need some work space light­ing. Plus, I didn’t care for our big light box at all. In addi­tion to that, both Mr. Mom Endeav­ors and I loathed our sink. The sink was so rounded on the bot­tom of each side that every sin­gle thing you put in the sink would slide right to the mid­dle over the drain. SUPER annoy­ing! Plus, it wasn’t very nice to look at. It was the white-ceramic style which over the years had become all scratched up and stained. Even after a good tough clean­ing it still looked so dingy in places. Com­bine that with quite pos­si­bly the hard­est water on Earth (seri­ously, the cal­cium & min­er­als in the water here is insane), the faucet looked crusty & awful.

So, we decided to redo the light­ing (and add more), get a new sink & faucet, and add hard­ware to all the cab­i­nets for at least a lit­tle bit of a cab­i­net makeover! There were lots of shop­ping trips to Lowe’s to browse & make deci­sions (there were like 200 dif­fer­ent hard­ware options alone). Then, we finally got to work last week.

Up first was installing the new sink. And, I LOVE it! It’s amaz­ing how just that updated things so much. The right side is so big that we can fit a han­dled pan flat on the bot­tom. So much nicer for wash­ing! And so much pret­tier!

Here’s the side by side com­par­i­son: Next up was the light­ing. There was one recessed light installed above the sink. But, we wanted more; basi­cally one over each work sta­tion. Things were a lot eas­ier since that one already existed (so the elec­tri­cal was already installed–wire just had to be added & run from it to the other new lights). We had to cut cir­cles out of the ceil­ing, which was really nerve wrack­ing. I thought for sure we were going to end up hav­ing to patch dry wall. But, nope–everything went well.

Once the canned light­ing was in, next up was the over­head light­ing. Again, I was super ner­vous that we were going to have tons of patch­ing to do once we took off the big flu­o­res­cent light­ing unit with the wooden frame, but it came off well too. We had to patch a few small holes and do a bit of paint­ing. So, it worked out well that we did the canned lights first, as we took one of the ceil­ing cir­cles we had cut out into Lowe’s for paint color match­ing. It came out great! Then, up went the track light­ing. Last, but not least was the cab­i­net hard­ware & then we had a com­pleted mini kitchen remodel! It not only looks nice, but func­tions much bet­ter! The light­ing above the coun­ters made a HUGE dif­fer­ence. Even with­out the new track light­ing on, I can work at the coun­ters with just the recessed lights on. We put them on a dim­mer switch, which is really nice too! Amaz­ing what just a rather small makeover can do! And, the trans­for­ma­tion of the kitchen since mov­ing in is pretty crazy! So, what do YOU think?

If you’re inter­ested, here’s the list of the larger items we installed (click on any of the links for more details):

• Port­fo­lio 6-Light Bronze Dec­o­ra­tive Flex­i­ble Track
• Kohler Dou­ble Basin Stain­less Steel Sink
• Delta Sav­ile Stain­less Faucet

For more great ideas, check out Lowe’s Cre­ative Ideas on FB and Lowe’s on Pin­ter­est. And, did you know that you can sign up to receive the Lowe’s Cre­ative Ideas mag­a­zine on your i-pad or i-phone?  A great way to have a lot of good ideas right at your fin­ger­tips & per­fect when shop­ping at the store!

Dis­clo­sure:  I am a mem­ber of the Lowe’s Cre­ative Ideas Cre­ators & Influ­encers Net­work and receive a Lowe’s gift card to com­plete my projects.  All opin­ions & expe­ri­ences are entirely my own.