House built in the 1960's

When my husband and I got married, I moved to his house which was his grandparents' house that was built in the 1960's.  For those of you that live in an older home like mine, you would know they didn't come with the most appealing style or color.

The kitchen is very important to me since i am a stay at home wife, i have to make sure i make nice meals for hubby when he comes home from working to provide for our family.  But the kitchen cabinets back in the day were built with very little space between the upper and lower cabinets so our modern small kitchen appliances such as coffee maker or blender do not fit in that tiny space, plus the counter top already had burn damage so we decided it was time to refresh our kitchen.

My husband was gungho about updating the kitchen ourselves, so one weekend, he started ripping the laminate counter top and the laminate backsplash.  he also removed the range hood.  Then he stopped.  Thought.  Gave up.

We came to the conclusion that it is nearly impossible for us to refresh the cabinets since it would be a long process and we don't have a second home where we can still cook, so we gave up and left the kitchen the way it was.  And that was more than 3 years ago.  I have been cooking in the kitchen for the past 3 years in its condition and I am not too fond of it. (duh!)

Spring of this year, my parents bought a house near us so it led to us thinking about remodeling the kitchen while we live in my parents' house.

So we made a call and had the contractor come out and give us a quote.  When everything looked good, we decided to really do it.

let's see what the kitchen looked like before hubby tore it apart

then hubby tore it apart.

the soffit, i think this is such a waste of space

our laundry room is in the kitchen.  since the counter space is so limited, we had to put the microwave on top of the dryer