I am so excited about this post. I think I’ve been dreaming about sprucing up our kitchen since we moved to Texas a year ago. The current kitchen is in great condition. Everything “works” well but it’s currently very uncomfortable. There’s a tiny island in the middle which we currently have to take laps around anytime I want to get from the oven to the sink or the pantry to the stove. It’s uncomfortable and I’ve been dreaming of a better layout for cooking and entertaining.
I’ve been working back and forth with our contractor and we’ve “finalized” our plans. I wanted to run them by y’all and get some feedback because… you know, we’re friends.
We’re not doing a lot of demo in the kitchen, but we are moving the refrigerator. Right now, there’s not much space between the fridge and the exit to the breakfast nook and most of the time we have to close the fridge, move out of the way and let another person pass by or they just have to go around the entire front of the house, through the living room and then out to the breakfast nook. It’s uncomfortable, just take my word for it.
Alex had the idea of moving the refrigirator next to the pantry, getting it out of the way completely and allowing for a great walking space in and out to of the breakfast nook. I loved the idea, but it still felt a bit tight. So we decided to get rid of the kitchen island (more on this in a bit)
We also decided to not add any upper cabinets to the now empty space and and create two floating shelves. The fridge is really bulky and blocks off a lot of the natural light that comes in from our breakfast nook windows. I wanted something that would let in the most amount of light, so floating shelves it is!
The second biggest change we’re making is removing the kitchen island. Our kitchen is really small so we’re wanting to maximize as much of the walking space as possible. Right now, we’re having to walk circles around the island to get from the pantry to the fridge and from the sink to the oven. It’s more of a nuisance than anything else. Once we talked about reconfiguring the fridge, we realized that it was still pretty tight. So, out with the island! Alex did a little recon in the attic and found that we have about 20 of our engineered terra-cotta tiles which is more than enough to cover up the space under the island as well as patch up the pony wall extension (more on this later) We also have a couple of tiles in the kitchen that have a few cracks so they’re going to be fixing that as well.
Alex is going to be doing the demo for the island and he’s really looking forward to it. He’s putting on his Chip Gaines #demoday hat and getting to work.
We’re also removing the microwave. I’m not a fan of microwaves to begin with but this-one in particular is big and bulky and always in my face. So we’re raising the vent-hood and covering it up with a custom cabinet. The space has to be high enough to also add a pot filler. I’ve always wanted a pot filler and I’m feeling super fancy just thinking about having one.
Another thing we wanted to do was extend the cabinets all the way to the ceiling. To cut costs, and to not have to move the existing upper cabinets, we’re going to add a faux box to the top of the uppers and finish it with crown molding all around the entire kitchen. The upper cabinets will still be functional but the faux extension will just be decorative. We’re also changing all of the cabinet doors (uppers and lowers) to shaker style cabinets. to make them look a bit more modern.
So this is the other side of the kitchen, where we’ll be moving the fridge to. In order to make space for the refrigerator, we’re going to remove the bottom cabinets and make a custom cabinet around the refrigerator making it look a bit more custom built. We’re adding a double garbage drawer between the dishwasher and the refrigerator. I can’t tell you how excited I am about hiding the trash. Right now, we don’t have a good place for our garbage can. It’s currently behind the fridge and it’s just bulky and always in the way. I also like the fact that we’re placing the garbage next to the fridge and the sink and thus reducing the amount of “leaks” that happen from my sink to the garbage can.
Next to the refrigerator, we’re extending the backsplash all the way up to the ceiling and adding two smaller floating shelves for my plants!
Ok, this is something I’m excited about. Our front portion of the kitchen has a pony wall that blocks off so much light. We’re removing the pony wall and extending the countertops to meet the lower countertop height. We’re also adding a farmhouse sink! yes! That too is making me feel all kinds of fancy and I can’t wait to wash all the dishes. ha!
We’re changing the faucet to something with a little more character and rearranging a lot of the switches so that they’re not so prominent and getting one of those garbage disposal buttons instead of a switch.
This is the pony wall that we’re rearranging. We’ll have to replace both of the floor tiles when we bring the pony wall to the same width as the cabinets. It may not seem like much but I feel like there’s going to be so much space in this little section once the fridge and the pony wall are done.
So, we’re starting work on the kitchen this Monday and I can’t wait to see it come together. In the meantime, we’ll probably be doing a lot of cooking outdoors, but that’s ok because the weather is slowly turning and the kids and I are here for it.
I’ll come back and update the blog as soon as we hit the start button, or give the green light. I’m not exactly sure what the actual renovation vernacular is.
