Kitchen One Room Challenge - Week 1

If you're new here... Hi! I'm Amy.

I am a mama to 4 wild and crazy boys, a military spouse, and I travel the US making people homes more beautiful. I'm a whirlwind of creativity and it's beauty in chaos pretty much 24/7 around here! I started as a wedding and event coordinator right out of college and transitioned naturally to interiors while wanting to make my house a home on a budget as a young military spouse. Fast forward 15 years later and I am a work from home, homeschooling mama who fills her time renovating our 1980's home with my husband and kiddos by my side!

I'm so excited to be one of the guest designers for this spring's One Room Challenge! I am so ready for the fun and challenge of this, so let's go!

Over the next 8 weeks, I will be completely renovating a space in my home.

The space I have chosen to renovate is.....well, I think once you see the before you'll realize there was no other chose....

MY KITCHEN!!

I am so excited to take this on with my hubby and transform this 1980's era kitchen into a space that I can cook up meals for my 4 beast children and my beast hubby, because this before space was NOT working to cook for 5 boys who seem to have 2 hollow legs!

Let's take a look at some more photos of the space.

Yes, I know the brick is beautiful, BUT it seriously blocks the light in the space and I live in the woods, so I need natural light. Also, it blocks the view of the windows that show me that my kids haven't fallen off of their bikes or scooters outside yet too! Also it's small. I can touch the sink and the stove at the same time if I stretch out. I don't know why I would need to do this, but I tried it and I could, so I just thought I should let you know. We love to dance after dinner in the kitchen, there is no room for dancing in this kitchen and that needs to be remedies ASAP.

I also really, like really, really, really want an island. I love a huge island. I love entertaining and serving on the island, and I love having my kiddos are sitting at the island and drawing (or fighting, let's be real they are brothers) right there with me as I cook.

The cabinets are also in bad shape. They are peeling and just looking rough. There is also only 1 upper cabinet and very few cabinets all together. The brick takes up so much space that there are hardly any cabinets.

Also there is this weird ledge. My toddler, Jude, has already tripped over that ledge about 2.7 million times. And although I don't think I can totally get rid of the ledge because I don't want like 7 ft ceilings since my ceilings aren't super high, I want to address the ledge so it's less of an obstacle.

There is no space to eat in this kitchen either. We love a dining room for special occasions but the eat in kitchen is where we eat 99.9% of the time. And that white tile??!!? Ummmmm no thank you. You have got to GOOOOO! I'm ready to rip out all of the tile and counters and start fresh!

I'm ready to take on this project and bring more beauty to this space. I wan to make it look like it was always here and that the previous owners who embraced everything 80's just had really amazing taste almost 40 years ago. I'm so excited! But also nervous, because although I design other people's kitchens all the time, I have never actually designed my own until now! And I usually have a contractor or a builder doing everything but this time around Steve and I are going to tackle almost everything ourselves! I hope you're as excited as I am to have this done because living through a renovation, especially a kitchen one is kind of like a mini version of HELL. So here we go, 8 week countdown. Let's GOOOOO!!

Follow along on my Instagram stories for all of the behind the scenes details! And to check out more of the One Room Challenge and all of the designers go to www.oneroomchallenge.com/orc-blog