New Kitchen Cabinets

I must be the luckiest girl in the world.  

This is the before: 

I must say, the after is so much better.  Here it is again just because I love it so much.  

Back in January of 2010 I wrote a post called A Girl (and Boy) Can Dream.  Over a year and a half ago hubby and I dreamed of new cabinets on the wall that was not being used well.  

We designed this mock up at Lowes.  We went and had the cabinets priced out and found that they were way out of our price range.  We just could not afford the expense.  

Well, nothing has changed much in the last year and a half, but we did some research and found that with Ikea shelves and if we did all the work ourselves we could just afford it.  After six hours at Ikea (they made us wait for about two hours to get some help with the ordering process) we had them ordered and ready to go.  Then we had to wait for the delivery.  Six weeks later hubby and my father-in-law installed the cabinets.  

I must say, it was not easy.  

First we had this mess of the delivery to live with.  

Some of the boxes even spilled into the living room and office.  

We spent the week between when the cabinets were installed, and when my father-in-law could come up, to to build the frames.  After we built the cabinets we had even more stuff everywhere.  

We boxed in our desks with all the upper and lower cabinets but we saved a lot of time having them ready.  

I also had to clean out the old pantry shelves.  What a mess.  It was not fun.  

We moved the shelves to the basement.  

I had to mop the floor three times.  

I threw away a ton of old food that passes its expiration date, and even more never uncooked dried beans.  

The whole house was a mess for about a week.  No guests allowed.  

When we finally got to the cabinet built I was so happy.  I could not wait to put all the food away in the new pantry.  

We had a lot of trouble with hanging the cabinets because the ceiling of my house is crooked (shhhh, don't tell).  In the end we hung the cabinets crooked as well.  Unless you compare the cabinets to the refrigerator, you really can't tell.  

Then we had a problem with the bolts that hung the last cabinet.  Somehow the bolts went missing.  We will never know if Ikea did not include them or if hubby threw them out when he was unpacking the boxes.  

In the end, we had to drive all the way to Kingston to get something that would work.  Then the trim had to go up.  

In the end, everything worked out.  We got the cabinets hung, trim installed, and all the work done.  

Let me leave you with one last "after."  I just love looking at it.

Now we need a counter top and we will be all set.  Any suggestions?  Hubby and I like wood, but we might see about something synthetic as well.  What is your favorite counter?