The kitchen of our current home featured 1970s-era dark cabinetry, a linoleum floor, dated wallpaper and an adorable french chandelier. There were stainless double ovens, a black dishwasher and a white refrigerator. And despite its dated decor, there was something intriguing about this house. It had soul, I suppose. History.

It has taken a good long while to reach a point that I was willing to reveal pictures of the remodeled version of our home. Every inch of space, inside and out, seems to need more work. And work is not something that always happens fast.

We spent the first few weeks living in this house with no kitchen at all because the cabinets were delayed. Even after they arrived, we spent a few more weeks without a sink or countertops. When all the pieces were finally in place, it would be another 6 weeks before the backsplash was installed.

I saw the refrigerator on Pinterest and we ordered it immediately. It was probably the first thing we bought. My husband picked out the stove, which was more modern than I anticipated. We picked out the countertops together, but he was almost ambivalent toward the cabinets. I, on the other hand, spent hours ensuring there was a drawer or cabinet for everything: deep drawers for the pots and pans, shallow drawers for the utensils, two pullout trash cans – one on each side of the kitchen because he’s always standing in front of one of them.

It took awhile to find that perfect color of gray cabinet, and when I brought a sample door to the house to see it in the room we realized it was the same gray that was in the original linoleum floor. I had also wanted to use a dark gray for the backsplash grout, but was overruled. He realized I had been right all along when the grout was still wet and looked dark gray. Of course.

Gold seemed to be the right finish for everything in this house, although it was a little tricky to find a matching faucet, soap dispenser and filtered water dispenser in a style we liked. The light fixtures came from Pottery Barn in antique silver. We sponge painted them gold, including the chain.

I thought the keeping room would be one of the most used rooms in the house. It hasn’t worked out quite that way, although it’s still one of my favorite rooms. We mounted the tv so that it pulls out and swivels toward the kitchen so my husband can watch the news while he cooks. The sun shines so bright in that window that the begonias I put in the planter over the summer actually bloomed.

It’s always a mystery to me how a room becomes the first room to be finished, and it’s no different for the Keeping Room. How it came together so quickly I’ll never know, but it has looked just the same until a few weeks ago when we found the andirons at the Habitat for Humanity Restore for $4 (they’re solid brass!), and I found the animal print pillow on Amazon for $7.

My husband found the muntins for the windows and the sliding door in an upstairs storage room, and we thought they changed the room. The hydrangea along the patio just outside the kitchen door swallows the other plants all summer, and in less than a years’ time it has provided enough dried flowers to fill every container in the house.

The kitchen is the heart of our home with memories to last a lifetime.