Kitchen Reveal

So I've been holding out on you guys when it comes to our kitchen.  After spending months and months on renos, we finished it last spring but I took a break from blogging before I could share all the photos!

Thanks for your patience but I finally have my act together and would love to share the finished product.  Things to note: With two big dogs and a baby, it's not usually this neat and tidy.  It's also technically not 100% finished since we still need to plug all the little Ikea holes inside the cabinets but I got impatient.  

Remember how sad our kitchen was when we moved in?

I prefer to think of it like this:

There was practically no counter space and hardly any storage.  When we finally installed our dishwasher, we had to remove our only drawers, which we replaced with an armoire and kitchen cart.  We also had that (formerly) exterior window, which looked into a standing shower left by the previous owner.  We had expected to add a powder room when we removed the shower but we've actually come up with a better use for the space and I'll blog about it later.

Another thing we changed was the side of the door to the basement.  We ended up opening an entrance to the basement landing right off the dining room.  This allowed us to close the wall in the kitchen and gave us more cupboard and counter space.  We even found room for a narrow pantry.

During the process, we updated the electrical work, added many lights and tore up our old tile flooring to lay new Marmoleum.  You can find several of our kitchen progress posts like this one under the renovations tab at the top of this page.

Are you ready for the actual "after" photos?  We are really excited to share them!  Here they are!

I love that we chose two toned cupboards!  We also opted for gold-hued pulls, which I tried to pick up in the vintage rug.  I also have a copper cookware collection that will eventually be stored and displayed above our cabinets.

Pictures usually tell it best but here are some details behind some of our design choices:

We LOVE our durable quartz counters and our giant double sink, which is usually filled on one side with bottles.

We love our cabinet lighting, which makes the kitchen feel more expensive for a relatively small cost.  We also decided to splurge on a marble backsplash to tie in the white and grey cabinets.

While we were tempted to install a gorgeous range hood, we opted instead for a microwave with a good fan because I really wanted to maximize both the counter and cupboard space.

We bought extra tall cabinets so neither of us can reach the top shelves without a stool.  The tops of the glass cabinets house decorative vases but the opaque cabinets are ALL functional storage.

You can see the door to the pantry at the far right of the photo below.  Had we not moved the basement door to the dining room, we would have lost all that space!

We have a little breakfast station set up in the far corner.  That's where we make coffee, toast and smoothies in the morning.

In order to maintain a clear passage to the family room, we had to end our counter with lots of space to spare.  We finished the room with shelves.  We plan to display Rudy's artwork in the frames. :)

There it is!  It's been a long road but it was worth the wait.  We hope you enjoyed the photos because we've really been looking forward to sharing them!  Our new kitchen is functional and modern but it still feels like us.

Stay tuned for our upstairs washroom and main floor family room reveals.

Kitchen Progress

It seems that this time of year, I always take a little vacation from blogging in order to work longer hours.  This year is no exception, but I promise that some late nights of work have left me with dozens of half-finished posts so I'm hoping to be publishing them more regularly for a while.

Corey's been making incredible progress on the kitchen.  He's hustling to finish for a party I'm throwing for some of my clients next month and we're super excited to have such good motivation.  I'm really looking forward to showing my clients and friends the progress we've been making on our new/old house!

Most recently, Corey has added the spacers between cabinets and the hardware as well.  Doesn't that brassy gold just pop against our grey cupboards?  

He still has some drywall to touch up but we're so close to being ready that we ordered our paint today.  I can't wait to show you guys the finished product!

Let There Be Light! ... In Our Kitchen

Guys, I'm pretty excited to say that our kitchen is in the "finishing touches" stage.  That means spacers, knobs and pulls, cover panels and the odd shelf and the trim that will hide the lights (no idea what it's called) still need to be installed and then Corey can tile the backsplash and we can paint.  Woot woot!


Unlike our kitchen in the condo, this time we really wanted both under-cabinet and in-cabinet lighting.  It gives the kitchen such a wow factor, don't you think?  Because these cabinets are so high, I can't really access the top shelf (even on a stool) which means the top shelf of our glass cabinets will be assigned to purely decorative items (hello, milk glass collection) and the top shelf in the other cabinets will hold items we don't use very often.

It won't be long until our kitchen is actually finished. :)

Kitchen Colours

It is almost time to paint the kitchen, and those of you who follow the blog know that I need to live with test swatches for a while before choosing a colour.  You'll also recall that we love Farrow and Ball paint, so we hopped down to the Farrow and Ball store to buy some test pots of paint.

While our kitchen has very minimal wall space, we're considering continuing the kitchen colour into the family room, which raises the stakes considerably.

We brought samples of our bottom cabinet colour (the top are white) as well as our backsplash to the store to compare.

Farrow and Ball has a wide range of colours and we are still debating between two different colour families.

On one hand, we loved the Teresa's Green that we used to paint the crib so much that we thought another pale bluish green belonged somewhere else in the house.  Our kitchen does not have any exterior windows so we need to be careful not to choose anything too dark.

We really liked Pale Powder (which is a lighter version of Teresa's Green) and Skylight (which has a little more blue).

On the other hand, we felt a warm pink/peach tone would pick up some of the warmth in the grey cabinets and the backsplash.  I also liked that pink would be unexpected in our kitchen and I often like to choose unexpected colours for rooms.  Of course, we didn't want anything too pink... especially if the kitchen colour was also to be a contender for our family room.

We were drawn to both Setting Plaster (which has subtle terracotta undertones) and Pink Ground (which is lighter and slightly more pink).

Here's how they look on the wall.

The lighting in our kitchen makes the colours look so different.  We were both a little surprised when we were drawn to the pink tones but they really warm up the space.  Which would you choose?  We're living with these colours for a while and waiting to make a decision until our cabinet lighting is finished in case it changes the room.  I'm not convinced we've found our paint colour yet.

Vintage Glass in the Kitchen

I couldn't resist this pretty blue vase at the thrift store (above) and it reminded me that once we're finished the kitchen, I'll have a place to display my pretty glass.

Remember all the vintage milk glass we collected last year?

We used it to group at each table during our wedding last summer.

Well, I had initially thought I'd give it away after the wedding but I've recently been considering keeping it and putting it on display.  A quick google search revealed dozens of gorgeous collections.

I like the way the owner of this one maintains a casual vibe by stacking the milk glass and even mixing in different tones and styles.

This collection in the white hutch gives me a peek at what mine may look like displayed in my white glass front cabinets.

And I love this collection of translucent blue glass, which would mix nicely with the white milk glass.

Choosing a Backsplash for the Kitchen

This post serves as proof that between diaper changes and night feedings, Corey has continued to work on completing our kitchen!  At this point, almost all the cupboards are hung and the doors are being installed.  There's still lots of finishing work to do (like finishing the walls and adding lighting, hardware and spacers) but it's exciting to see it begin to take shape.

Here's a photo of the plan we created on Ikea's website.

Take a look at one of my inspiration images and you'll see the look I am hoping to achieve with the white cabinets on top and grey on the bottom.

Photo from The Inspired Room

One thing I noticed about my inspiration kitchen was that the white subway tile backsplash might not have enough impact for my space.  I wanted something a little more eye-catching like the marble tile behind the tub in this picture, which I found when we were beginning to renovate the bathroom.

After a trip to a tile closeout warehouse with Rudy, we found exactly what I was looking for.

I think this grey and white marble will be the perfect choice against our grey and white cupboards and our white quarts countertops.

Our Sad Kitchen

Before Rudy was born, I was blogging a lot more about the nursery than the kitchen.  Is that because I'm afraid of the kitchen?  Well.... maybe a little.  Our kitchen has been an eyesore and source of anxiety for me since we moved in but I'm pleased to finally report some big progress.

As with every room in our new/old house, there were lots of "Huh???" moments.  When Corey was tearing down the old walls, he came across random wires that weren't attached to anything and even one live wire... Yowza!

All that work to tear out the old tile and the random pieces of drywall which were hiding even more random wires left us with some pretty sad looking walls.  Yep, this is probably about the time I stopped checking on the kitchen because it scared me and grossed me out a bit.

Luckily, Corey pushed forward and hung new drywall using his nifty laser level.  

In order to hang the cupboards, parts of the walls (around the chimney and a plumbing stack) had to be framed.

And finally, my brother and Corey began to build and position the cabinetry little by little...

And all of a sudden, one day, our sad kitchen started to look a little less sad...

I felt even better when our new quartz counters were finally installed.  With our counters, came our sink and gas cooktop:

We're still a far cry from finished but it's coming.... soon.  I hope.