The last time I updated all of you, we had an unfinished floor (since NOVEMBER!!) and we hadn’t touched the cabinets or countertops yet. It was not a pretty sight.
Yeah, I’m not lying or exaggerating when I say it was not a pretty sight.
My original plan for the kitchen was to refinish the existing subfloor under our ugly vinyl and carpet in the kitchen. We got a guy to give us a quote we were happy with, and he bailed in the middle of the job. Just stopped returning phone calls and emails. We actually wondered if he died – no joke! Turns out he just was a jerk, but not dead. It’s sad, because he did such a beautiful job on the rest of the floors in our house!!
We got another flooring man out after Christmas and he basically told us that our floors weren’t worth refinishing. They were filled with nail holes and nails partially sticking up out of the floor, so it would take forever to fill/sand them, plus there were some big holes as well, and he said it just wouldn’t look as nice as we’d like it to. I was bummed, but by that point, I just wanted SOMETHING on those dang floors! We were losing heat and were running space heaters instead – what a headache.
My husband’s uncle works at a local flooring place, and we took Isaac there for some nighttime floor selection. We were going to look at laminate flooring, but were swayed to look at Luxury Vinyl Tile instead. I asked you all what you thought on Instagram, and the result was an overwhelming “I LOVE IT!!!”
We ended up buying it, but it was more than we had budgeted for our floors, which was a little painful. We had budgeted out $1,000 for the flooring, and this ended up being a little over $1,300 (delivered & installed). So it’s definitely the most costly part of our kitchen renovation, but we decided that we would take away from other things in our remodel to make the floors work.
A few weeks later, we were blessed to have these *beautiful* floors in our kitchen:
Oh, and did you notice that we painted as well?? My favorite Martha Stewart Sharkey Gray (see all of my neutral paint inspiration here!) – we gave the trim & ceiling another coat of white paint. AMAZING what a difference that can make!
OK – back to the floors. Seriously, I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love them.
UPDATED TO ADD: Gosh, guys! You all love my flooring too! I finally dug up the actual name of the flooring – here’s the order information if any of you are interested! 🙂 Also – we used this SAME flooring in our NEXT kitchen remodel, and yes, still love love love it. See what it looks like in our current kitchen here.
And notice that we painted our counters?? The hardware isn’t up yet, but we spent a weekend priming (twice), painting (3 coats), and polyurathane. I’m not going to be posting a tutorial – there’s so many good ones out there! But it took a full weekend – and it’s so worth it. We only had to do the bottom cabinets, and we didn’t have a lot of them to do. Thank goodness!!
Finally, we replaced the UGLY countertops (that were falling apart) with butcher block that we inherited from our parent’s lake cabin. They are actually refinishing their kitchen up there, and were getting rid of the butcher block.
We had the same sized sink, so they were able to actually take the countertops from the cabin and cut them to size in our kitchen.
We did this ourselves (my husband and my dad) because they just had to make some straight cuts (no sink hole). It took them a whole day, and they were kind of frustrated by the end of it, but had the satisfaction of having them DONE by themselves!! By using these countertops and by not hiring someone to install them, we saved well over $1,000. Definitely worth it!
The butcher block has been sanded down, but I think I’m going to stain & seal it to match our open shelving pantry (which we are LOVING by the way)
Here’s what still needs to get done:
- Stain & seal countertops
- Backsplash
- Plank wall
- Install open shelving
- Lighting fixture
- Window treatments
Can’t wait to share the next update with you – it’s amazing how much of a difference a few weeks make at this point!
I’ve looked at the finished product. Very nice! I just wanted to thank you for posting the time and length that this project took. We are slowly getting things in our little forecloser done a little at a time. Sometimes before and afters are depressing because they seem ‘instantaneous’ or ‘look what we did in one weekend’. And although we have done a few big projects a weekend before, that’s not our usual reality. This is much more realistic.
What are the vinyl floors? Not sure if you already posted info elsewhere. Brand/color name?
Hey Amy – they’re Adura brand “Dockside”. We LOVE THEM – and will be installing them in our next house’s kitchen because we loved them so much!
May I ask which color of Adura Dockside you chose?
Oh, so that’s how a vinyl flooring would look like right there. It’s quite interesting to see that because by the looks of the pictures it seems like the flooring are more hard wood. Well, how soft or hard is a vinyl flooring and would it be dent free?
are the floors adura dockside in pier or boardwalk color?
I so wish I could answer this for you – I’ve looked back through our paperwork and I don’t know which color we used! I am so sorry!
They are the color Boardwalk. It’s on the yellow label on the far right side. Wayfair carries this but are currently out of stock in samples so I’ll
keep looking around.
Hello! I love your new kitchen! It’s is incredible what you guys did with the budget you had! Wow!!!
Can you kindly let me know the color name and brand of the white cabinets? It is gorgeous!
Thank you! 🙂
Thanks, Leticia! It’s a BEHR paint – straight off of the shelf untinted white 🙂 I believe we used an eggshell finish? Maybe satin?
Hey Christina. Love the kitchen. We are looking at white cabinets and dark floors as well. I think our floors are a little darker than what you have installed. Have you found that the floors are hard to keep clean looking due to the dark color?
Mine haven’t been too bad! You can see more dirt on them than on the other lighter flooring in our home, but I think the variation in color/texture helps 🙂
Hi Christina,
I know you said you looked through your paperwork and cannot find the color of the flooring you used. However, does your paperwork have a number like, 602, 603 or 604? I hate to even bug you about this again, but I’m on the fence about this exact style flooring and I Loooooove how yours turned out. I’m doing an entire main floor so I don’t want to screw up. ; ) No stress if you can’t find a number or don’t have time to look. Thank you so much for your time! : )
Britt
I found it!!! Yay!! I updated the post 🙂
They’re boardwalk. Scroll up to the label she posted :).
Hello. I love the floors. I know you didn’t install, but do you know if they click together or are glued down? If they click together, do you hear any noise like a clicking from them?
We installed them in our new house! They’re glued down 🙂