my life | whitehorse children's photographer

Okay, so don't pay any attention to how MESSY my kitchen is but rather, find yourself in awe over the incredible transformation of my kitchen. I live in my husband's childhood home here in beautiful Whitehorse Yukon. Our house is super funky. It's an octagon log home with an 8-panel peaked roof so it's kinda like living inside a giant crayon. We have windows on almost all sides of the house and one (leaky) skylight - but that's another story altogether. So our walls, being log are obviously BROWN. The ceiling is natural wood so again, BROWN. My flooring,as you can see is laminate and yep, you guessed it, BROWN. My countertops are BROWN and the cupboards, despite that weird tint that heavily verithane-d wood takes on (yeah, orange) they're a version of brown too.

Recently, we finally got rid of our leather sofa set which was also brown. I traded it for a chenille fabric set which is a delicious warm and comfy shade of GREY! But the kitchen can feel terribly dark in the winter so all that brown was not helping the situation. Two years ago, we picked out hardware but we never did anything with it. It sat in a bag in the bottom of my closet largely forgotten about and buried under giant dust bunnies. This summer, that bag was rescued from dust bunny hell and finally opened up with REAL intentions of being used. Now truth be told, it wasn't exactly a wave of DIY inspiration that finally kicked my ass into gear. No. It was the fact that the kids actually pulled one of the upper cupboard doors right off the wall and I figured one door down, twelve more to go (and four drawers!).

So after puttying old hardware holes (because standard sizing has changed a little since the 70's which is when the kitchen last received an update), scrubbing fuzzy grease accumulation (you know the stuff, it's always and only found in kitchens!) with TSP - bless the inventors of that stuff!, and a little sanding wherever necessary, I got to priming and weeks later, paint & new hardware. I feel kinda like I just climbed Mount Everest but I have to admit that even though I'm nowhere near done (upper cabinets & a new tile backsplash, baseboard trim too) I feel like my kitchen is my favorite room in the entire house!

I can't promise when this will be completed but I do feel proud of the work done so far. I definitely don't love renovations on any scale but this was certainly worth the trouble. Phew. Now I need another rest after reliving that experience in writing...