Kitchen Renovation!

So let's talk real quick about our last major home project before Baby T arrives (meaning this project was done and this blog post was written before he arrived)! When we moved into this house (2 years ago - wow!) our least favorite room was the kitchen - but it also happened to be the biggest/most expensive project we wanted to tackle so we knew we had to live with it for a while. The cabinets were light oak which just aren't our style, the Corian counter tops were a blah shade of green/blue and scratched SO easily, the hardware on the drawers (no hardware on the doors) were not our style, the back splash is the same tile as our floor (which is not our taste), and the box lights seemed so outdated. 

Once we got pregnant we knew that the kitchen would have to wait - it was no longer a priority. Luckily things changed in our favor when we sold our other house and had some extra money to play around with so we decided to go ahead and remodel the kitchen! Looking back...I am SO so glad we did this before the baby came - it would have been a nightmare to go through that type of renovation with a baby in the house! The project ended up being a combo of DIY/contracted and we are so happy with the way it turned out!

Cabinets

We went back and forth on the cabinets for a while before finally making a decision. Our original plan was to stain the cabinets dark like we did in both of our bathrooms but after a lot of consideration we decided we really like the clean white look in the kitchen rather than the dark. Part of this probably has to do with our obsessive HGTV watching and that most of the kitchens these days have clean white cabinets and we are just drawn to that modern look. The next step was deciding if we were going to DIY or hire someone. Thank goodness Justin convinced me that the job was too big and we just needed to hire someone because it only took 3 days and they did a wonderful job! We picked the whitest white paint we could find and I was unsure how I would feel about the wood grain showing through but turns out I like it! I think it looks really good and you would never know that's not the color the cabinets were originally. We hired a company we found on Angie's List and their prep work was so meticulous which was great since we are kind of OCD. I ended up having to work from my parents house once they started with the paint because the fumes were so strong (we also had to sleep there a couple of nights because of the smell). This would have been no bueno with a baby! The total project took about 3 days.

Hardware

We used the same drawer pulls that we did in the bathroom and I love them! The cabinet handles from Ikea are just what I was picturing. Justin and my dad were able to knock out this project in 2 evenings!

Counter Tops

The next stage of our kitchen remodel was the counter tops. When we were going to do dark cabinets I had a white counter top picked out, but when we changed gears to white cabinets it was back to the drawing board on counters. We knew we wanted Silestone/quartz (rather than granite due to the ease of care) but other than that we weren't quite sure what we wanted. I finally decided on a grey color (shocker I know) but kept going back to this color Stellar Snow color wishing it wasn't white and that I didn't love it so much! One day while browsing at Home Depot we noticed one of their sample kitchens had white cabinets with stellar snow counter tops and it looked great! Apparently by itself stellar snow looks stark white but when you put it next to actual white it has a grey-ish color! Done deal! I was so excited to finally have a counter top picked out - especially since it was the one that I have been drooling over for 1+ years now :)

The week before our counter tops were being replaced the heat from our crock pot cracked our Corian counter top...what the heck?! The crock pot was on low and still did this - so glad we were getting rid of the counters or else I probably would have had a major pregnant hormonal breakdown!

The counters only took about 3 hours to demo/install the new ones...crazy fast!

Backsplash

Now if only our back splash installation could have been coordinated with our counter top install our kitchen wouldn't have been out of commission for almost 3 weeks. (We used Lowes for the counters and backsplash) We chose a marble herringbone grey/white pattern and I'm totally in love with it. After we had picked everything out for the kitchen we actually saw very similar kitchens (our counters and the exact backsplash) on HGTV - which probably explains why they have trouble keeping this backsplash in stock. This part of the project turned into a semi disaster...we didn't have enough material because the guy who measured completely forgot to measure the island, scheduling issues with the company, and Justin breaking his arm in the middle of this install. Oh yeah - and my high blood pressure scare....talk about a crazy week! Luckily the end product is just what we were hoping it would be and now all that stress/drama is behind us.

Lighting

We had box lights in our kitchen and they just seemed pretty outdated (even though the house is only 7 years old). Justin and my dad ripped the lights down and installed recessed lights throughout the kitchen. It has made such a difference in the look/feel of our kitchen. We hired a drywall guy from Angies List to fix the texturing (from where the boxes were) and the extra hole in the ceiling (oops) and you would never know these lights weren't there the whole time! 

Paint
It's very subtle but we (by we I mean my dad since Justin's arm was broken and I was massively pregnant) painted the kitchen anew grey (Sherwin Williams) - I know how shocking it is that we chose grey. I think it's hard to see in the pictures since I did these without a lot of natural light but we painted the island bar area with a darker grey called Cathedral Stone (Valspar).

Before

During

 

After