Last Minute Kitchen Finishes

Before we listed our house in Florida, we had a laundry list of things to finish. A lot of the things were small that fell into the category of you notice if they're not finished but they don't really stand out when you're finished. Then there were other things that stood out to us but if you didn't see the house before, you would never know they weren't always there. The kitchen area fell into that second category.

The back entrance was in some form of construction until about 2 weeks before we listed the house. Since we moved the door frame into the kitchen, we had to re-drywall and patch a good chunk of this space. We joked that by the time we got done, this space it had more done to it by square footage than every other space in the house. We ended up taking down the chalk board because we wanted to take it with us and painted the space the same color as our half bath. 

The ceiling also needed patching so we added a plank ceiling similar to our bedroom, but this time we decided to do a square pattern with the light centered. We really got into ceiling design in this house and I think this is my favorite (the birds being a very close second).

Next, we decided to finish off the top of the cabinets with crown. We had planned on doing this from the beginning but had never gotten around to it. We already had bought the crown so it seemed silly not to install it. Nate added a border of scrap wood to the top as a place to nail the crown to and then trimmed them out, including the sides of the cabinets near the window.

Caulking and painting is always our saving grace when it comes to crown and it really makes the cabinets look completely finished.

Last but not least, we added a door to the pantry per the request of our realtor. We started with the door that used to hang between the dining room and kitchen.

 Nate cut out the upper panel and cut it down for the pantry door frame and I gave it a new coat of paint that I mixed up by lightening the kitchen ceiling paint. We wanted the light from the pantry to still make it into the kitchen and so we started looking around for transparent options for that upper panel. Since we didn't spend any money on that part, we decided to go with glass and to keep with the age of the house we got glass that has chicken wire embedded it in. We got it at a local glass company and it's a really cool look that makes the door look a lot older than it is. When the door is closed you can't see the contents of the pantry but still get the great light. the glass cost about $120 but I think it was totally worth it since we wouldn't have been able to buy a door like this for under a few hundred.

Those three little things really finished off the kitchen. I wish we had been able to enjoy them more (or take that door with us) but it was worth getting everything in tip top shape before listing the house.

What projects do you put off doing and then wish you had done them sooner?