We (Marie + Ben) moved into our home in 2017, and the kitchen was designed/built in ~1991. After a hip injury in 2024, I wanted to design our kitchen to be much more accessible and make much better use of the space. We had no pantry space, rotting particle board cupboards with no removable shelving, and lots of windows. You can read more about the decision to renovate here: The Old Kitchen: Deciding to Renovate.

In this doc I’m sharing the entire process of planning and implementing the renovation of our kitchen. You can check out the week-by-week renovation journal below if you want more detail or context, and see how decisions lined up over time. If you’ve never tackled a renovation before it can be incredibly intimidating, so I’m sharing my experience here!

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Before + After

Where we started

The house when we purchased it in 2017

Day 1 tear-down

Completed kitchen

The Kitchen Design

This moodboard was designed using Whimsical, and links to the specific products purchased in this kitchen. The main kitchen rendering was done using the Ikea Kitchen Planning tool.

https://whimsical.com/embed/6SHBN8QMbupDZaE51jbhPL

Week by Week - A renovation journal

Progress: A weekly journal documenting the progress

The Feed: A reverse chronological feed showing most recent entries in the journal

Timeline: A view of the entire year at a glance

Gallery: A gallery view of the highlights of each week or key decision

Updates