Our Kitchen Renovation
From dungeon to haven, we love our new kitchen.
When house hunting, we saw finished kitchens that we didn't like.
When we stepped into this kitchen, we got excited.
To everyone else, it was a small, dark, ugly creature. To us, it was a blank slate, begging to be renovated.
Weston's family helped us with demolition.
Weston did most of the installation work himself, tirelessly laboring after work for weeks in order to get it finished before we moved in, while I was at home with our new baby!
We carefully came up with the design together.
Since it's a small, galley kitchen we knew the had to pick colors to make it brighter and thus seemingly bigger.
White was a given. After many discussions and compromises we decided on a white/grey marbled counter top and added a pop of color to the white kitchen with a light green bottom cabinet.
The green we chose was used in the two homes I grew up in, which makes my new house feel like home.
We originally wanted marble counter tops, but then we found out they are very high maintenance and easy to stain. No thank you!
We went with quartz, a highly durable material that still gives you a smooth finish. We found a style that has the marble look we wanted. Win, win!
Carolina Custom Surfaces offered a reasonable price and did a fantastic job with installation and minimal seams.
At first we wanted a unique, white tile backsplash, but after seeing the dramatic price differences and how our preferences were not that different, we went with the classic subway tile!
It was surprisingly affordable.
"Let's line all our walls with subway tile!" - Weston
We went with a grey grout to give contrast to all the white.
We were torn between a farm sink and modern sink. We went with the modern sink to unite the kitchen to the rest of the house style, which is somewhat midcentury modern/ Scandinavian look (think Ikea).
One of the best decisions we made was OPENING THE DOORWAY! Weston's family (who have worked in construction) suggested we do not knock the entire wall down (since there was plumbing behind the wall), but rather enlarge the doorway, which matches the enlarged doorway to our living room.
Just look at that difference!
Much more open and bigger.
On the other side that wall was a cabinet. We took it down, which gave us room to open the doorway, and free space to make the kitchen feel more open when you walk in.
The removal of this cabinet allowed more room to the doors leading to our outdoor porch. We were going to paint the doors an accent color, but ultimately decided on white, to create a seamless look.
We chose a sliver handle to replace the gold one, since it matched our appliances.
We got a new stove! We moved the microwave to the other side of the kitchen and added a range hood instead. We like the function and look of it.