My Kitchen is such a sad room

I think our kitchen has so much potential but bad plumbing and broken floorboards definitely take it from the $500 paint job and light cosmetic makeover to the million dollar serious plastic surgery *a la Heidi Montag* category.

Here's how it looked before we bought the house

Here's the kitchen after we moved in

However, I do love our curtains that I bought from Anthropologie *psst, the secret is they are DISH TOWELS*

Ideally if I had a $8,000 budget I could work wonders but when you have an already overpriced 883 square foot 2 bed/1 bath how much investment do you make on a kitchen remodel? I know granite and farmhouse sinks are the trend but in our kitchen we don't even have room for a dishwasher. It doesn't help that the entire blogasphere has either totally renovated or is in the process of remodeling their kitchen. Every day all I see are the most amazing, under $1,000 but looks like $10,000 redos. I look at my Family Guy *sorry about the farts* mustard painted/years of bad paint job cabinets and think, all we have to do is take the doors off and throw some white semi gloss on them and it will make a world of difference. But that brings on a whole list of problems. Our dishware is not show-worthy and we use our cabinets to stash our snack supply. I don't think our mismatched Ikea wine glasses and Target melanine plates are pretty enough to loose the doors. I also worry about resale value without the doors *which we would keep in the garage*. I would love to get the plumbing repaired *our plumber Malcolm has a if it ain't broke, don't fix it mentality* and replace our 20+ year relic water heater. Our pipes are 1920's galvanized steel that have rusted almost shut so our hot water in the kitchen sink is a mere trickle. Our cold water is absolutely fine, funny thing is the opposite stands for the bathroom, plenty of on demand boiling hot water and just a drop of cold water in the basin. So I'll say it once and I'll say it again, I need to remodel out kitchen *hopefully next Spring*. In the meanwhile, I'll continue to torture myself with these fabulous kitchens...

J'adore!!

The last one is closest to what I would do, the white subway tile back splash, the pendant lamps and the hardwood floors. I would probably do a table like the 2nd one from Ikea

My mood board is close to $2,000 alone. Then add plumbing *estimated* $4,500, new water heater $1,200, subway tile and countertop *not sure which material but leaning towards Corian* $1,500, wood floor refinishing/repair $800-$1,000, accessories and miscellaneous $1,500. $12,000 on a kitchen that I hardly ever cook in and would most likely never use because as soon as we remodel I want to put our house on the market. To remodel or not to remodel, that is the question!!

One a much happier note, Olivia is 3 weeks old today!! She slept so much earlier that when we started the photo shoot, she was a bit fussy.

Here are the top 5...

The last one cracks me up, she was so pouty mouth and each time we propped her up we had a 3 second window to get the shot before she toppled over. Antz likes the third one so that will most likely be the winner.

Happy 3 weeks little ladybug!!