My DIY Vintage Dream Kitchen Remodel

In August (on my actual birthday) we purchased a lovely new house!!  It was built in 1954 and has so much Mid Century charm!  We are having the best DIY time remodeling it by ourselves.

Since it is a pretty big house, at some point over the years it was split into a duplex with a 2 bedroom downstairs and a 3 bedroom upstairs.  This means the house has TWO KITCHENS!! Yes, you heard me right.  TWO!!

With my darling husband being a master chef in the making and me being the queen of all things baked goods, we decided that we were going to keep both and have His and Hers kitchens.  The upstairs became my husbands modern dream kitchen with all of the new appliances and things to make all of his culinary dreams a reality.  My downstairs kitchen has become my vintage daydream, pet project, and pretty much favorite place to be. (My girlfriends say it looks like a kids playhouse, but everything works.)

This post is about my sweet little kitchen makeover from start to finish.

I will start with the initial before and after, because WOW! 

BEFORE

AFTER!! 

  The first thing I did was get rid of all of the old appliances and prime everything.

Before Primer

After Primer

At the same time I was searching all over Craigslist to find the perfect vintage stove.  It did not take me too long to find this beauty, that works perfectly and has been sitting in a lovely ladies storage for 20 some years.  Got if for a steal at $300!!

My new stove, sitting in storage waiting for me to take her home. 

Once I had the stove, I knew what my colors were going to be.  I was going to build the entire kitchen around the Aqua beauty!  I picked Teal, Pink and Yellow as the colors.

Teal, Pink and Yellow, with fancy silver drawer pulls!

I'm also using the same teal as an accent color through the downstairs and the connecting shelf.

Before and after shelf divider at kitchen entrance. Pretty new paint and cute *disco knobs.
(*Not really disco, but that is what I call them) 

At the entrance to the kitchen I wanted my own menu board, so I painted the side of this cupboard with chalkboard paint, and I turned a cute drawer pull upside-down to create a chalk holder.  Now Mamachelle's kitchen has a cool place to display all of the deliciousness being baked in there! 

After all of the painting was done, I pulled up the old beat up floor and installed a brand new one all on my own!  It was a process, but I feel like it was not too terribly hard.

My new floor!! 

Then I added some sweet details, and displayed my vintage collection of stuff and things.

Teeny Wonder Woman!! Eep!

Mr Chester Crumbs

Searched forever to find the perfect mini fridge to keep my milk and eggs.  I needed it to be the right color, but not cost a million dollars. Found this online for less than $200!

And here is the big after!  LOVE my kitchen!!

Our Perfect DIY Winter Wedding (on a budget) 01-04-2015

We met in the Winter and fell in love in December, so we really loved the idea of having a Winter wedding.  Since we had Sylvia for the majority of Christmas break, we decided that the weekend before she went back to school would be the perfect time.  The day was amazing.  Everything really fell into place.  The colors were neutral tones with bursts of red and green.  It was just post Christmas so the perfect time for this combo. 

 Cindy Apple provided these lovely photos. 

The venue for our wedding was Sodo Pop.  Perfect size for our event and totally budget friendly! 

 I had this very specific vision of a dessert table, I'd been seeing so many lovely ideas on Pinterest, so that was truly my baby.

The cake plates were mine and borrowed from a few of my friends. Having the variety, created a sweet shabby chic look for the table.

The photos of the kids and the suitcase were just things from my own house!

 

I baked a  variety of cupcakes, and a small carrot cake. (The cake was less for eating but to create a perfect centerpiece for the cake topper and the table.)  I also added baby photos of all three of our kids to the table.

I used a wood burner to burn words into little cut wood discs and used that to label both the dessert table and the buffet.

 All of the cakes turned out so yummy!

 The Cake topper was a statue I found the very first time Sean and I went thrifting together, on one of our very first dates.  It was meaningful to us, so I wanted to incorporate it into our wedding.

My son approved of the dessert buffet!

My Bridesmaids all wore black dressed that they already owned.  I purchased the Jr Bridesmaid dress and Alice's flower Girl dress on after Christmas sales for 70% off.  The ladies all wore red shoes and the guys all wore red ties, that is how we tied it all together.

I had always dreamed of getting married in a red dress, so I was super excited about mine.  I also have always been in love with this vintage style.  My perfect red dress I purchased at unique-vintage.com on clearance for $50! I didn't even need to get it altered.  It was perfect! So well made and such a lush fabric!  I got a million compliments and felt like a princess. (Sylvia even told me I looked like one too!)

My flower Girl Alice and Jr Bridesmaid Sylvia

 The Groomsmen ties were also all on after holiday clearance at Macy's.  They all wore their own suites.

For the decorations, we used a lot of things from nature.  The pine cones were all collected over the prior months by me, baked in my oven to kill anything living in them and then painted with glitter spray paint.  I used my wood burner to decorate the logs.

Perfect center pieces designed by Audrey

Sylvia made the "stained glass" jar for me as a Christmas gift, so I really wanted it to be incorporated into the wedding decor.

All of the greens were fresh and purchased the day before. They were meant for holiday centerpieces, so I lucked out and got them on post holiday sale!  Marked down from $5.99 to $.99 a bundle.

 

The table clothes were a mix of thrift store vintage and snowflake holiday tablecloths that I got after Christmas for 75% off.  We also re-purposed a lot of the burlap table runners, the white lights and small candles from the office holiday party.  We found that doing a Winter wedding right after New Years really did offer a lot of great prices on post Christmas clearance sales

The arch, the isle runner, the cupcake stars, the gold paper straws, all of the flatware and paper plates (All biodegradable and green) and some of the burlap banners I purchased on Amazon at very reasonable prices.

I made a beautiful Winter Sangria as the signature cocktail.  Since it was a Sunday afternoon, I made it much less potent than most Sangria recipes, but it was a hit.  The bartender said people were flying through it!  When the Sangria ran out, we just added bottles of Cava to the fruit in the container which made a fruity Cava cocktail.  People loved that too!















We also had a little photobooth by the door.  It was just a jar with some paper props and a backdrop.  It gave people the option of doing their own photos with their cell phones.  Our guests had a good time with it! 




Our friends all came up and sang a variety of meaningful songs for us and then we had a live band (CFO) finish the night.  It was a dreamy evening for sure!

I even got serenaded by my groom!

 We really did have an awesome stress free day and stayed on budget! It was dreamy!