Kitchen update!

As usual, Joe and I have been busy around the house!

A couple of weekends ago, we finally got around to painting the kitchen.
I had originally been putting this off, since we weren't sure whether or not we would be renovating the kitchen. I looked into cabinet refacing, and the $9,000+ estimate was a little steep for my liking.
So, since that has been put on the back-burner for now, Joe convinced me to paint the walls and help spruce it up! It was definitely a good idea, since the kitchen looks much warmer and more welcoming now.
Let me remind you what the kitchen originally looked like: The same, baby yellow that used to fill our house. (Thankfully, painting the kitchen walls means our entire main floor has been repainted! What a relief!)

And here it is now! We chose a warm brown colour. We had a similar colour in our old house, and I never got sick of it. So, here it is again!

I even think it might make the ugly cabinets a little more bearable...

On top of repainting, our cooktop decided to stop working.
I have to admit...I wasn't that upset. The who-knows-how-old, stainless steel cooktop was the only stainless steel appliance in our kitchen. Everything else is black. I saw it as an opportunity to make the kitchen look nicer! The problem was that the old cooktop is a Jenn-Air, down draft. That means that it basically needs to be replaced by a Jenn-Air, down draft, unless we want to add in a hood vent of some kind. So, I went on Kijiji and found a black cook top that was the same dimensions as our current one. Perfect! We picked it up for a mere $150 (compared to about $1000 new) and had it installed the next day (by an electrician that we also found through Kijiji).

Before

After

I have to admit... it would have been worth the $220 (including installation) even if the other one didn't break, so I'm pretty pleased!

See how it matches our kitchen?!

There you have it. I'll leave you with a before and after. It's still not the kitchen of my dreams, but it looks MUCH better!