Client Kitchen Updates: Design Plan

For years now my mom has been wanting to change a few things around in her kitchen to brighten it up and make it feel a little bigger. Due to the location of the kitchen, without major renovations, there's really no way to make it bigger or change the cabinet layout. It's a galley style kitchen, and that's how it shall stay.

Her home is very unique & pretty well known in our area. After all, there aren't many pieces of property on 7 acres in the city with horses. The house was built in 1949, but before going up for sale, the previous owners updated it. In my opinion, they chose less than stellar materials and finishes. Luckily my mom has been on a mission to restore her home to fit the original Colonial style, with modern amenities.

Below is a design board I quickly put together to give my mom and her builder an idea of the direction I was suggesting we head in:

She has these jars in red, aqua, and white, and loves the color combination -so that was our starting point.  The existing cabinets are cherry, and while painting them would be the easiest way to brighten the space, we've all decided that's not the best idea for wear-ability.  From there of course I jumped into fabrics. This kitchen has a gigantic window (we're talking 7 feet wide!) over the sink that looks into the backyard at the horses, chickens, and sometimes cows that take up residence behind her house. That was the only opportunity to add in some great color and pattern, so I ran with it.

For a classic element, we chose a subway tile back splash - white, with soft gray grout. The current back splash is a 3" extension of the dark taupe Corian counter tops, and painted above that. Pretty blah.

The counter tops will change to a quartz that is reminiscent of granite. After using quartz in our half-bathroom, I recommend it to everyone! No maintenance and a great look. One of my favorite additions to this kitchen is the white farmhouse sink that will be under-mounted into the quartz. A bright chrome bridge style faucet will be installed for a little glitz along with a hot water tap and a garbage disposal button for a clean look.

The current hardware is a rustic brown (not even bronze), that just blends in with the cabinets. Hardware is like jewelry for your cabinets, and you don't always want to wear jewelry that just fades into the background, do you? So we're kicking those up a notch with some chrome cup pulls on the drawers and some sort of blue knobs on the doors.

One major renovation taking place is the removal of the wine hutch. This cabinet was just taking up space in my mom's kitchen, since she's not a big wine drinker. There was also a small sink here, just feet from the main sink. To me, it didn't really make sense. That has been removed, and in its place will be a custom coffee bar, complete with a pot-filler faucet to keep the tank of her Keurig full conveniently, and drawers built for k-cups. This will be painted white.

After talking with her builder, he just happened to have some time to quickly fit in her kitchen while we were in Alaska. It's not complete just yet, but I'm amazed at how much they got done in a little more than a week! I can't wait to show you all the full reveal. Anytime I'm there we stand in the kitchen and say how much we love it. :) ...and it's still under construction!

Linking Up To:
Everyday Enchanting - Enchanting Inspiration Link Party No. 6

Kitchen Renovation {Before}

It's been almost 3 years since we renovated our kitchen, and today I thought I'd show you some of the before pictures, and some reasons why we decided to gut and start over.

 

Above is a view of our old kitchen standing in our dining room. Just to note, I had already removed the fruit and ivy wall paper that was on the bulkhead when we moved in. I planned on painting the bulkhead (one thing I didn't like... why not take the cabinets to the ceiling?)  a deep brick red to coordinate with the floor and small tiles in the back splash, but I ended up just painting it white, in hopes that we would demolish it all and start over in the near future.

But there it sat in this state for about a year and a half. The fridge on the end also bugged me. It felt like it was waiting for you to walk into it. The location of the double ovens (and the fact that we HAD double ovens) was one of the few reasons I liked this kitchen. On to some more reasons we didn't like it.

You see those dark green counter tops? In this picture they're quite clean, but since they are a solid color, they showed every spec of dust that landed on them... and it drove me crazy! The cast iron sink was also a pain to clean and keep clean. Can you tell I'm a fan of low-maintenance materials?

While the cabinets were solid wood, and custom built in home originally, the hardware was not really my style, nor were the exposed hinges. I know those are easy to change, but that was about the only easy thing. That huge fluorescent light in the middle of the kitchen being one more of the difficulties. And while I know they're more Earth friendly, I despise the light that fluorescents give off (ice, ice baby, too cold, too cold!).

Across from the end of the peninsula (sorry, I don't have a before picture) was a pantry. We kept our trash in there, small appliances, place mats... random stuff. It was only about 15" deep, and split into two upper cabinets, one of which was on the receiving end of the laundry shoot from upstairs, and two taller lower cabinets. It didn't work well at all.

We waffled over removing the quarry stone floor. There was not a crack or chip in any tile. That's impressive since it was over 50 years old! But it was so hard to work with, and went through the kitchen, dining room, living room, entry, half bath, and laundry. Much like the green counter tops, it was also difficult to make it look clean - everything showed.

Before we even decided to completely start over, I had drawn up some plans. These were 3 years in the making! I'm still happy with everything, so we definitely looked at our options.

I still love to look at those technical drawings. They're almost identical to what we're living with today. Watching my drawings and dreams turn into reality was so much fun! And being a part of all of the designing and building was so interesting and exciting. I can't wait to show you the after photos.