Home: Kitchen Makeover

As the final piece of our 2018 home update project - we focused on the kitchen. This was really my end game - the place I disliked the most in our house and the place we spent the most time. The new floor really made gave it a step up, but still I wasn't a fan of it as a whole. If I could have my way I would've redone the cabinets, counters, backsplash, and lights - but as counters cost more than all the other things put together, those are being put on hold indefinitely, and since those aren't going I don't want to change the backsplash and then have it ruined whenever the counters are replaced! 

So here is what it looked like before (well after the new floors, but before the other changes):

 It's not awful, it's just -so- ORANGE! So one tone, which is not a tone I am a fan of!

And here is after: (please ignore the mess at the far end of the counter)

You can see the biggest change is that we had the cabinets painted! Our house painter from spring, came back and knocked out these cabinets in under a week - she's the best. 

The color I chose may be a controversial one - it's called Link Gray from Sherwin Williams, but yes it is a very green-gray. I debated HARD about it - I didn't want white, too basic. I didn't want gray, too overdone. Black seemed like a bad choice for kids. I picked like 15 different greens, and after much deliberation ended up with this one and I LOVE it. You can see how different the whole tone of the kitchen feels. Much cooler - more modern. You'll also notice how different looks in the pictures taken in different lights. 

 Also I changed out the old ornate brushed bronze hardware for simple matte black. 

Bonus - the counters, while I still don't care for them, really improved so much when the surrounding color changed. The gray brings out more cool tones in the granite and doesn't amplify the golden nature. I will still want them changed someday - but it will be a hard sell unless I find a steal of a deal. 

 Then, after months of carefully searching the internet and following sales I picked new light fixtures from West Elm. You can see the new pendants above and the new entry way light in the background. I couldn't find a "before" of the old lights, but they were very outdated and ugly. 

 

 

 And the new dining area chandelier - which is my favorite. It makes that area feel twice as big as it did before - without all the massive bulk of the old chandelier. Plus people were always hitting their heads against it, and now that won't be a problem. 

 I made a last minute decision to sell our old kitchen counter stools you can see above once I realized the color clashed with the new cabinet color, and I made enough to buy 2 new ones that match the new look so much better. Todd was disappointed that we had fewer stools but truthfully I like having a wider walkway in between the table and the counter now, and we so rarely used more than 2 stools anyway. 

I'm so happy we decided to go ahead with these changes - it looks so much more open and bigger and cleaner and nicer to me. 

A couple little things I plan to do are to spray paint that gold shelving unit black (which is was originally anyway), and I need to paint the piece wood trim under the cabinets black, and hopefully replace those ugly corvals with some black metal / iron ones (this is proving to be harder than I thought it would be). There will always be little things here or there that I want to tweak or improve, but the bulk of the work is done for now - hooray!