Meet My Kitchen - Part 1
So...My house. Remember that project? Yeah, a LOT has happened since I last updated you. In the midst of final wedding details, the actual wedding, the Luxury Living Show Kitchen and the two weeks in Italy for my honeymoon, the house has be-bopped along and a whole lot of progress has been made. It's officially a home. Not a dust pit, not a construction zone, but a home, our home.
With that being said I am WAY behind on updating you all and if I put all of the updates in one post you may be reading for a few days straight and that just can't be good for your eyes. So, I'm going to break it up a little, starting with the kitchen. WARNING: even within the kitchen itself there are many layers of progress, so this will definitely be My Kitchen part 1. I could go to part 10, but I'll try to consolidate and hold back my long winded tendencies.
Last time we talked about the kitchen it looked something like this...
It stayed like this for weeks while we worked on other parts of the house and tweaked this space preparing it for it's new cabinetry. We had to paint, add some electrical, slightly rearrange the plumbing, add a gas line for the new range and have some HVAC work done to relocate a floor vent and prepare for the hood that would vent to the outside. You may also remember the addition of the picture frame moulding in the dining room that Brent installed in this post, it too was part of this prep stage for operation new kitchen. All of these tweaks and modifications were necessary, but other than the addition of the moulding and the painting not too much pizazz was added to the space during this period of renovation. So, while we were making progress, it didn't really feel like it, because there was a whole lotta work with no added pretty. It was more like added dust and backaches and then some more dust.
Finally after much sweat, dust and tears (Brent gets really emotional when he is able to successfully wire a new outlet) we found ourselves at the eve of our cabinet installation. We FINALLY got to take up the plastic that had been covering our newly refinished floors and the kitchen looked like this the night before the big install.
As some of you know I'm a designer at Bell Kitchen & Bath Studios and we make custom cabinets. And Thank God we do, because as you can see, and as I have said before this kitchen is small. Of course removing the wall between the dining room and kitchen as well as closing off the random door to the outside significantly increased the opportunity for functionality and really opened up the space, but still the space is small and the design had to be carefully considered (obsessed over) to ensure we made every bit of the space as functional as possible. We schemed and tweaked and literally thought through every single cabinet determining what would be stored inside. I will post a whole cabinet innards post at some point, but for now just know no cabinet in our kitchen just happened. It happened because we deemed it worthy or necessary to take up precious real estate in our small space.
It was D-day. The install team rolled up and got to work.
Our cabinets are from Bell's Studio frameless collection. The cabinets are maple and painted Benjamin Moore's White Dove, OC-17. We painted the walls the same color except for the under the chair rail which we painted Sherwin William's Caviar, SW6990. The existing crown molding was removed and replaced with new crown molding around the cabinets and into the dining room so everything was the same and there was no weird transition.
By the end of the day...POOF - the beginnings of a kitchen! Stay tuned, the countertops were templated a few days later, more on that soon!
With that being said I am WAY behind on updating you all and if I put all of the updates in one post you may be reading for a few days straight and that just can't be good for your eyes. So, I'm going to break it up a little, starting with the kitchen. WARNING: even within the kitchen itself there are many layers of progress, so this will definitely be My Kitchen part 1. I could go to part 10, but I'll try to consolidate and hold back my long winded tendencies.
Last time we talked about the kitchen it looked something like this...
It stayed like this for weeks while we worked on other parts of the house and tweaked this space preparing it for it's new cabinetry. We had to paint, add some electrical, slightly rearrange the plumbing, add a gas line for the new range and have some HVAC work done to relocate a floor vent and prepare for the hood that would vent to the outside. You may also remember the addition of the picture frame moulding in the dining room that Brent installed in this post, it too was part of this prep stage for operation new kitchen. All of these tweaks and modifications were necessary, but other than the addition of the moulding and the painting not too much pizazz was added to the space during this period of renovation. So, while we were making progress, it didn't really feel like it, because there was a whole lotta work with no added pretty. It was more like added dust and backaches and then some more dust.
Finally after much sweat, dust and tears (Brent gets really emotional when he is able to successfully wire a new outlet) we found ourselves at the eve of our cabinet installation. We FINALLY got to take up the plastic that had been covering our newly refinished floors and the kitchen looked like this the night before the big install.
As some of you know I'm a designer at Bell Kitchen & Bath Studios and we make custom cabinets. And Thank God we do, because as you can see, and as I have said before this kitchen is small. Of course removing the wall between the dining room and kitchen as well as closing off the random door to the outside significantly increased the opportunity for functionality and really opened up the space, but still the space is small and the design had to be carefully considered (obsessed over) to ensure we made every bit of the space as functional as possible. We schemed and tweaked and literally thought through every single cabinet determining what would be stored inside. I will post a whole cabinet innards post at some point, but for now just know no cabinet in our kitchen just happened. It happened because we deemed it worthy or necessary to take up precious real estate in our small space.
It was D-day. The install team rolled up and got to work.
Our cabinets are from Bell's Studio frameless collection. The cabinets are maple and painted Benjamin Moore's White Dove, OC-17. We painted the walls the same color except for the under the chair rail which we painted Sherwin William's Caviar, SW6990. The existing crown molding was removed and replaced with new crown molding around the cabinets and into the dining room so everything was the same and there was no weird transition.
The kitchen and the dining room are now divided by a peninsula that houses the microwave, trash/recycling, cutlery divider and a few rollouts on the front side and a hidden cabinet on the back.
Love the happy little corbels.
By the end of the day...POOF - the beginnings of a kitchen! Stay tuned, the countertops were templated a few days later, more on that soon!
All photos are my own.