Renovation of Kitchen – Floors, Cabinets and Appliances

Bringing you up to date on the renovation of our kitchen – the floors, cabinets, and appliances are in! We are so excited to see our hard work come together. A girl can’t be much happier than when she gets a new kitchen. Especially when tons of sweat equity went into it and it turned out as lovely as this one did =)

The cabinets!

Before we installed the ceilings TJ ran new lights for the can lights and also dropped wires for pendants over the island.

After we were done with the painting, our cabinets were installed. Oh happy day! We worked closely with our cabinet pro to get as much storage as possible and he did a beautiful job.

The wall of cabinets is very efficient and will house the pantry and has space for all our appliances. The black island includes lots of storage space for those items I don’t use as often.

The kitchen fireplace!

What do you think about the fireplace now that you see it in the finished kitchen? We think it fits the space perfectly now and was worth every bit of the effort cleaning it and ultimately taking the stone off and then refacing it. The size of the fireplace is perfect for the space, and the lighter stone works beautifully with the white cabinetry and trim. Even though the fireplace is built to be a wood burning fireplace, we’re going to install gas logs. I want to be able to enjoy it whenever and as often as I want, and gas logs will deliver that convenience.

The kitchen floors – matching the new to the original

Because the kitchen and family rooms had a different floor installed by the prior owner, we ripped it out so that we could run the same wood throughout the entire main floor. We’ll be able to use it in other areas of the home. In the picture below you can where the dark original floor meets the new light floor. Even though the kitchen is at the other end of the house, we had to go ahead and install the floor throughout because we had to start where the old floor ended in order to match up the planks.

Disclaimer – TJ and I did not install nor will we finish the wood floors. TJ and I do most renovation work ourselves. But for wood floors and high end cabinets, we pay professionals. You know when it makes sense to do it yourself and when you need to sub it out =)

I finished the mantle using Minwax English Chestnut followed by a Satin Spar Urethane. I use the Spar Urethane for all my projects that require a clear coat. It lasts because its made to handle outdoor conditions and I’ve never had it yellow.

I’m using the same stain throughout the house. A friend shared the Minwax English Chestnut with me years ago and I’ve continued to use it. So that you have different shades of wood, you just cut the stain and use different strengths. That way you have variation, but it all blends. Plus every type of wood absorbs the stain differently, so that will provide variation as well. The mantle is small so I didn’t cut the stain at all.

We’ll refinish the floors after we’ve finished the renovations throughout the rest of the main floor.

TJ installed pendent lights that I found online. They’re modern, but have a kind of vintage vibe. So that’s classic to me =) They’re Hudson Valley brand, and I wouldn’t have been able to afford them except I got them on an INCREDIBLE sale. They were the only 3 left and had been marked down to hardly nothing. Sometimes you just get lucky =)

We bought the clock at Target and we went ahead and hung it up even before we had our appliances in lol. It looks lonely, but we were just so excited to have finally gotten to the point we could actually put up an accessory!

We’re going to finish the pantry with shelves in what was formerly a closet opening from the hallway that we closed off. We’re going to build very slim shelves on each side just insider where the cabinet doors open to handle canned goods. I’ll soon do a separate post about the pantry because we’re saving a small fortune doing it ourselves.

Appliances

For appliances we went with double ovens this time rather than a large (and expensive) range. I had a range in our last home and it was beautiful, but I felt the double ovens fit the space better in this home and they were far more economical. I did splurge with a Wolf cooktop though =)

I tiled the backsplash using a tumbled travertine to blend with the fireplace and the stone we chose for the island. It was a quick tile job because it wasn’t much space, and the travertine was the 12 x 12 netted squares so the pattern was already established and I didn’t have to spend time making sure I was following a pattern.

We went with the same stone for the island and the countertop – a quartzite. I wanted a stone that had a very soft veins, something that reminded me of marble, but without the concern of staining. We are not interested in redoing our kitchen anytime soon because the stone goes out of style LOL, we’re too tired! We need timeless.

If you’re not familiar with the difference, whereas quartz is a man-made material, quartzite is a natural stone. It’s very strong, very durable and very lovely.

We went with a white fireclay farm sink and chrome faucets. The gold is very popular right now, but we have so many warm tones in the room, I felt the chrome was the better choice. I’m going to go with black hardware on the white cabinets. I know I’ll love black hardware forever, and I may tire of the gold more quickly. I’m going to go with silver hardware on the black island cabinets.

There’s more to come, but we’re so excited about how its turning out.

So, just for the fun of it, a couple of before and afters:

The incredibly dark (because of dark paneling, dark beams, no lighting), narrow family room with the large, dark and out-of-place fireplace:

And, now, let there by light!

The bright, happy kitchen with soft white paint, a smaller, lighter fireplace, lots of ceiling lights, and pendant lights! Love, love, love!!

The flow of the room is so much more efficient because the space to the right of the island allows plenty of space to walk, and also house bar stools. Before it felt like a disjointed room, like they hadn’t planned properly and it was just an “oops” room. Now, it’s the exact opposite.

And one more, shot – even the stone on top of the island feels bright!