We have come a long way since we shared our initial mood board and plans for this kitchen. This was a labor of love that was initially to take 3 weeks but was finalized three months later. Initially, we wanted a moody, darker kitchen that I had dreamt about for years. I shared all of the initial details here but after a few mistakes from our contractor (sharing all of the processes here) we ended up with a completely different look than we originally wanted.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am IN LOVE with our kitchen. It’s super practical, so beautiful and it’s a room in our home that I look forward to spending time in.
Here are the final pictures, complete with some Christmas magic.
I love this view and love these shelves. This is where the refrigirator lived blocking the entrance to the kitchen and the light. This is now an open space that allows us to move in and out of the kitchen without having to go all the way around to the other entrance of the house.
At some point, I would love to add lighting above the shelf. I don’t NEED it per say, but I think having a specific light fixture here would make a statement.
These two glass doors gave us the biggest headache, but I’m glad we stuck with them. The little shine and glassware that’s popping through is so pretty. I remember having the idea to make these doors glass when we were on the way to a furniture store. We were trying to decide if we wanted an open vent hood or boxed and thought this would be the best balance between the closed hood and the glass doors.
I love how the additional boxes on top of the existing cabinets turned out. We wanted cabinets that ran all the way to the ceiling but replacing all of the doors and cabinetry would have run up our budget. The top boxes are faux cabinets and are just decorative but I think they make all the difference.
The hardware all along the kitchen is aged brass and the faucet and pot filler are both silver. I love the idea of mixing metals and playing with different finishes. My plan is to change up the decoration on the floating shelf and add more brass and aged silver to it.
The cabinet doors were are replaced. We had traditional 90’s design on the cabinetry and wanted to give it a more modern look with the shaker style cabinets.
This is one of my favorite views. We had a pony wall here that blocked the kitchen completely. This view makes me so happy and makes all of the headaches and tough times worth it.
When we moved in, the previous owner had all of the original appliances except for the dishwasher. We have been eying a Kitchen Aid refrigerator for years and we made it a point to budget the kitchen around our dream fridge. I am so glad we did because it’s one of the highlights of the kitchen. We ended up matching all of the appliances and are so giddy at the fact that we pushed for that. These appliances have been a dream and I look forward to cooking, baking and opening the doors to my fridge!
This is also one of my favorite views. This is where the kids homeschool on really busy days. I love that the kitchen and dinette flow so well together and that these spaces are so functional for our family.
The farmhouse sink makes this kitchen. It’s deep, massive and looks so pretty in this space. Installing it was tricky. They had to cut into the existing cabinet space and reinforce it below because it was so heavy. There were a few days of trial and error when it came to having the doors close.
The backsplash is so dreamy. We ended up adding a marble harringbone pattern that Alex and I totally loved. When we originally painted the kitchen green, we picked this backsplash because it had a lot of cooler hues. When we changed the color (towards the end of the process) I was concerned that the cooler undertones would clash with the warmer paint, but it worked out in the end.
There are so many valuable lessons that we learned through this process and I will work on a blog post listing out all of the things that we would suggest you look out for if you plan on updating your kitchen and hiring a contractor. Overall, we are happy with the final product. There are a few things that are out of our control and we can’t fix, so we’re just looking past them and focusing on all of the good!
Sources below
Cabinet pain Color: Accessible beige by Sherwin Williams in a Satin finish
Stainless steel print shield counter depth refrigerator
Single wall oven with even heat convection
Looking back, I think both Alex and I would do this again. It was a bit of a headache and it was so stressful but goodness the kitchen is so pretty. I think we were able to really use this space and maximize it’s utility.
It also reminded me of our first kitchen renovation project. It seems like it was forever ago. We had a $800 budget and spent it mostly on the tile.
