Fixing up the House

[AerynLee]

The house we moved into has newer ikea cabinets, installed in 2009.  They're MDF or something similar.  The cabinet in the bathroom is delaminating from humidity.  I've noticed the cabinet over where we keep our electric kettle is also starting to fall apart from the steam.  Overall, I'm unimpressed and wish they'd just kept the original wood cabinets

Yeah, there are a couple of places where the laminate is peeling because of humidity. We took out a cabinet in the bathroom that was also having issues from humidity. Not why we took it out, it was a huge cabinet that blocked all of the light from reaching the shower but the water damage didn't hurt our decision

for the bathroom door, you can use double doors.  If you leave them opening the same way, you'd only have to close one side to access the full laundry.  Or have them open swinging out and no worries.  Another option is to use a solid folding door that opens away from that area.

I'm having problems picturing what you're suggesting here

Your cabinets aren't bad actually.  You won't get the money out of it if you  replace them.  Your best bang for the buck will be a DIY tile back splash, and replacing that countertop with builder grade stone or solid surface. You can get a reminant for under a grand in a kitchen that size. If you don't want to spend that much, you can pick up some better looking formica for $300. Go with the bamboo floors throughout. Drop  some field tIle in the bathroom and call it a day.

This is close to what we decided on. We're keeping the current cabinets, maybe painting them. We ordered a faux marble laminate countertop yesterday (happy Valentine's Day!) that will be installed for $600). We'll replace the sink with a smaller single bowl one, opening up more counter space. We also picked out our tile backsplash yesterday and I'm going to sign us up for one of Home Depot's free tiling classes so we can DIY. We're installing a woodplank vinyl throughout the entire house, it can even go in the bathroom.

Unfortunately the counter will take about 4 weeks so we're at a little bit of a standstill since I don't want to paint in the kitchen until we pull the old counters with their attached pseudo backsplash out. I might paint some of the other rooms to keep moving or see what I can do about painting the cabinets

[AerynLee]

Oh, and some belated pictures of the living room
 pictures removed

[Oh_Wrd]

for the bathroom door, you can use double doors.  If you leave them opening the same way, you'd only have to close one side to access the full laundry.  Or have them open swinging out and no worries.  Another option is to use a solid folding door that opens away from that area.

I'm having problems picturing what you're suggesting here

Double doors: the doors open from the center, each door is half the size of the regular door and hinges on each side.  They are basically french doors that fit inside a standard size door.  All of the builders have been using them on the entrance to master baths here in our area (on and off) for the last decade.  Folding doors: they are basically identical to what you have on the laundry, except get solid door centers rather than slats.
basically, the double doors look like the below image.  hope that helps.

[bacchi]

Are you looking at engineered bamboo or strand woven or laminate?

Our dog put nail marks all over the oak floor; white oak is only slightly less hard than engineered bamboo. Strand woven solid bamboo is very hard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janka_hardness_test

The laminate in the kitchen holds up better to nail marks, as someone mentioned above.

[Chris22]

Getting rid of the divider is an easy process. You can simply cut it out. However, you will probably have to make new shelves for the interior out of solid wood to replace the particle board ones in their currently to support the extra span and weight. Once that is done, you will now have a gap between your doors which means you will need to get larger doors and then add magnetic catches to stop them from swinging inward until they hit the shelves. My guess is it will be about impossible to find the correct sized doors off the shelf and you will have to go with something custom.

Late to this, but it shouldn't be that hard.  You can probably use some L-brackets to secure the shelves (side, and a long one for the rear) and sides/bottom of the cabinet.

For the doors, take that piece out of the middle, chop a 1/4" off, and then center it on the back of one of the cabinet doors and screw it in, half on the wood, half sticking out the side.  That way, when the cabinet is closed, it will look like the divider is there, but when you open it, it comes open with the door and is out of the way.  This is how one of my kitchen cabinets is by design because there presumably wasn't space for a full-width cabinet with the divider.  Only downfall is you can't open the side with the divider screwed on the back by itself. 

Looks like this:

[AerynLee]

Are you looking at engineered bamboo or strand woven or laminate?

We went with a wood-plank vinyl. Very durable, looks pretty good. Pictures of it in the living room are posted above

Late to this, but it shouldn't be that hard.  You can probably use some L-brackets to secure the shelves (side, and a long one for the rear) and sides/bottom of the cabinet.

For the doors, take that piece out of the middle, chop a 1/4" off, and then center it on the back of one of the cabinet doors and screw it in, half on the wood, half sticking out the side.  That way, when the cabinet is closed, it will look like the divider is there, but when you open it, it comes open with the door and is out of the way.  This is how one of my kitchen cabinets is by design because there presumably wasn't space for a full-width cabinet with the divider.  Only downfall is you can't open the side with the divider screwed on the back by itself. 

Looks like this:

{picture}

I think you underestimate how big my divider is. Look in the pictures at the beginning, it's literally 3.5 inches wide. Besides, I had tiny overlaps like that in our old house (maybe 1/4", cabinets were built that way) and I HATED IT, it drove me crazy. I'd rather have a divider than an overlap

[AerynLee]

We're keeping the current cabinets, maybe painting them. We ordered a faux marble laminate countertop yesterday (happy Valentine's Day!) that will be installed for $600). We'll replace the sink with a smaller single bowl one, opening up more counter space. We also picked out our tile backsplash yesterday and I'm going to sign us up for one of Home Depot's free tiling classes so we can DIY. We're installing a woodplank vinyl throughout the entire house, it can even go in the bathroom.

Unfortunately the counter will take about 4 weeks so we're at a little bit of a standstill since I don't want to paint in the kitchen until we pull the old counters with their attached pseudo backsplash out. I might paint some of the other rooms to keep moving or see what I can do about painting the cabinets

I failed at convincing DH to keep the current cabinets. Home Depot sells pre-assembled cabinets in white that seem to be decent quality and without a center divider. For our kitchen it would cost about $1300 normally and 20% off this month so just above $1k. Since we're replacing the cabinets the microwave is going to go above the oven clearing up that bit of counter. Luckily I was able to talk DH out of the pantry by pointing out that the bulkheads only stick out 15 inches so the pantry would look funny sticking out further than that.

Oh yeah, we're also replacing the oven. I wanted to do that anyway since the house currently has gas but used to have electric which is what I prefer. Which means we'll be calling out an electrician to get it hooked back up (something about switching out a breaker and changing the plug behind the oven). Since we'll have one out anyway that would be a good time to have a ceiling fan installed in the living room. Right now the only ceiling light is right by the front door and basically useless. There's a switch that controls an outlet behind the couch. If possible I'd like to have that outlet be a normal one and have the switch go to the new ceiling fan, not sure how easy that would be though.

So we're starting to pull up the existing floor in the kitchen and pulled out the cabinets on the small side (by the fridge) so we can prep and paint that wall. Hopefully we can get all of the walls prepped/painted before the counters are ready in 3 weeks so that once they're in we can put down the new floor and do the backsplash. The tricky part is getting to where we can move the cabinets/counters but still be able to use the kitchen. Probably not possible around the sink which of course is in the biggest stretch. At least we're making progress again

[AerynLee]

Funny story: Since ordering our counters our garbage disposal stopped working. We were planning on replacing it anyway since we're replacing the sink so we weren't concerned. This morning DH joked that we can tell people that our garbage disposal stopped working so we bought a new kitchen