slow kitchen makeover

I think, besides everyday life, I am going to try to focus this blog a bit more on design and stuff like that. Considering it's all I'm thinking about right now, it'll be nice to put my ideas in one spot.

I mentioned before that we're trying to trade our apartment. Well, the process is quite slow and I realized that we'll probably here for another few months. Since I'm kind of tired of where we live now (which is not really the reason we want to move, the main motivations are: lower rent and a more central location) I thought I can at least redecorate while we wait to move.
The problem is, we're students. With low, low incomes. So most, if not all of our stuff is second-hand. The new stuff is almost always IKEA. When we first moved into this place we were moving from a small 43 kvm apartment which we were renting, half furnished, second hand. Then we got a first hand contract on this apartment, which is huge (68 kvm) so we had A LOT to furnish. I've really liked our apartment but when we started talking about moving I realized just how much I wanted simplify everything. How much I wanted to focus on good design vs just having something to fill the space. And with a new move comes a new start.
But why not start now? Everything I'm choosing to do right now to our current apartment will transfer nicely to any other apartment we move into. And it's all budget friendly, easy changes.
So let's start with the kitchen, which is still a work in progress.
Before:

We have a huge kitchen! We put the white floors in ourselves when we first moved in and it made a world of difference (the previous floors were an ugly brown/orange color). The chairs we got second hand for about $14 total. The table is really, really nice (and extends to seat 10 people) but unfortunately I damaged part of it this summer with some water so we've kept it covered with this nice Laotian table cloth. The light is IKEA (duh). Since we're on the first floor we put up those lead glass windows you see in the back. I really like them and the warp the image a bit so we have some privacy.
I wanted to take out all of the color in the kitchen and focus more on the white, black, and rustic wood.
Here is what our kitchen looks like now:

We sanded our table this weekend to get the water stain out and then oiled it like crazy. It's as good as new. We also replaced our IKEA light with a simple globe bulb. Buddy, our deer, moved from hanging over our bed to hanging by our bar. Eventually, we'll trade the green chairs for white ones. Oh, and I moved the huge poster you see in the first photo to our hallway. So it's just a blank white wall now.
My inspiration came from these photos:

From Sköna Hem

From The Brick House