Kitchen DIY facelift

Welcome to my 1980’s kitchen in my 1955 ranch home. From the moment I walked into this house my Pinterest mind went crazy with ideas! I’ve already been able to try out a few. Some projects are still in the works but this kitchen project is 90% complete and I’m loving it!

We loved many things about this beautiful funky 50’s house, it has amazing wood beam vaulted ceilings, huge rooms, the widest galley kitchen I’d ever seen, but the kitchen lacked a bit of flare. What better place to start? Yay!  I’ve Pinterest dreamed about a bright white kitchen for years…years people! Who hasn’t, right? So after selling some things on craigslist, my favorite way to make money (read my article about selling on Craig’s List/ Marketplace here) , I started saving my pennies to tackle this dark dated kitchen dungeon.

My first change was replacing the oven and cooktop. I really, really wanted a double oven. We both have fairly large families, so holidays are packed with good people and a lot of food! When I saw this house had a wall oven I instantly thought about replacing it someday with a double oven. Who knew someday would be 3 weeks after we moved in? I “randomly” scanned through Craig’s List(CL) and Facebook Marketplace to see what was out there and what things were selling for, when I happened to stumble across a great deal on a ”new” set! GE Profile Induction cooktop and a  GE double wall oven!

I sent TechDad there to check it out and sure enough he came home with it barely squeezed in our Honda Pilot. Now this was actually before we closed on the house, so I didn’t even know if it would fit in the current oven space, but I hoped. Now, I don’t buy anything used unless its a great price and I can turn around and sell it if need be. It sat in our storage unit for a couple weeks until we closed on our house and moved in. We measured and determined, by a hair, it might fit! We had a friend run some bigger electrical lines to accommodate the power and my wonderful Dad came by and helped us squeeze it into the cabinet! It sounds easy, but they worked all morning to expand the current cabinet and then squeeze that super heavy oven in. I had to give up a nice storage drawer underneath, but I think it was worth it. The old oven would barely fit a turkey in it. Which was my marketing strategy to get TechDad on board with the purchase. He loves Thanksgiving turkey!

I use the double oven so much more than I thought I would. It really opened up the possibilities for dinner options when you don’t have to plan out baking the main and the dessert separately. You just cook them both at the same time! This is especially great for dinner parties and holidays! The induction cooktop fit just about perfect. We cut the hole in that lovely tan Formica a bit bigger and set it right in!

We used an induction cooktop, along with a gas stove, in Japan. We loved it, so we were super excited to upgrade so easily and because it was from CL we bought it for a third of the retail price! Induction works by surface elements heating pots by using an electromagnetic field rather than radiant heat. It cooks fast and cools even faster. This also makes cleaning easier too! Those boil overs don’t get burned on. I only use water and a rag to clean them off! No more stinky ceramic top cleaner and razorblade for me!

Now I’ll be honest the only negative of buying from CL or FbM is that you never know what you’re going to get, but I always figure that into the price. After we installed the cooktop we found that the 2 left burners did not work. We were pretty sure it had problems they didn’t tell us about, imagine that. But thankfully through our Home Warranty it was fixed. Our first experience with home warranty was a great one. A must ask for thing when purchasing a home in my opinion! And as an extra bonus, you know I turned around and sold the old oven and cooktop on CL for some pocket change! Who am I kidding it’s totally going towards those white kitchen cabinets! Up next is tile!!!!