Kitchen Makeover

I wasn't going to post pictures until the kitchen was COMPLETELY done, but I'm already loving it, so I thought I would share how we did this, in case some of you might want to do something similar!

Check out our little kitchen nook when we bought our house...
I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it...

So...before moving in, we painted the baseboards WHITE, took down the chair railing & painted the entire nook TAN & set our table up.
Nothing fancy, but we liked it BETTER...
After this weekend, here is our little kitchen nook...
I LOVE IT!

Now...if you want to take the plunge, here are a few instructions...
We first saw the tutorial at Frugal Home Design, found HERE
then a reader, Amber showed off her work...you can see HERE

Time to get to work!
We moved the table out of the way...

Yanked off the baseboards. Don't know if there is a fancy way to do this? My husband was gone, so I took a flathead screwdriver, wedged it in at the top & hammered the top of the screwdriver, until the boards came loose...
We discovered before the red & green stripes...this kitchen was actually PINK!

Amber suggested we paint FIRST, so that we don't have to paint around every single board...for 3 coats. THANK YOU AMBER!!! This was a great suggestion!
So...I decided where I wanted the Board & Batten to go to. Measured & drew a line along each of the walls. Then we painted the top green & the bottom white...
Now...for some pretty new baseboards!
We just bought 3 1/2" pre-primed MDF wood & cut at 45degree angles with a miter saw at the corners...
They had several widths, but I liked that width, so we also did 3 1/2" width for the top.
Measured...cut the angles & used a NAIL GUN to put the wood up...

(*Another helpful hint from Amber was to do the baseboards & top board FIRST & THEN measure all the vertical boards ONE AT A TIME. You want to be SURE the TOP board is completely LEVEL & because your wall might actually slope a bit...the skinny vertical boards might be slightly different lengths. This took a little extra time, but was SO HELPFUL in the end!)

So...I measured ONE board at a time, my husband would take it outside & cut it & bring it in & nail it to the wall...
Our system worked great & went pretty quick. They were all SIMILAR but some were 1/4" longer or shorter in some areas & if we had've pre-cut them to all be the same length, we would have been off.

Here is a close up of a corner...
showing the nail holes(that will be covered with wood putty)
& this is before it is caulked. One the seams are caulked, it will APPEAR that the wall is ACTUALLY part of the "wood panelling" even though it is just painted white...
This is before we have caulked it & before our final coat of paint...
But it already looks better than before!
We turned our table a different direction & put the leaf in, making a big square! First time we have had it opened to a square since we bought it!


When I get a new chandelier, some decor on the walls & maybe a cute tablecloth made for the table...I will post another picture, but for now...
I LOVE IT!!!

Let me know if you have any questions & I can TRY to answer them!
We didn't really know what we were doing, but it worked for us:)
The total cost for the project was about $45.

It took about 1 hour of painting last week
& we spent about 3-4 hours on Saturday working on it, but that included going to Home Depot to buy everything, figuring out how to work my brother's tools we borrowed, stopping for lunch, & stopping for a variety of "I need my mommy" moments throughout the afternoon, caulking, nailing & painting...so not too bad.