Kitchens, the Heart of the Home
Where do we spend the majority of our time in our home. Well, if your the cook definitely the kitchen. The kitchen is the heart the home where birthday cakes, cookies are made and afternoon snacks for children when they come home from school.
Having a kitchen that is functional and eye appealing makes you enjoy spending time there. Depending on our budget and what you deem a priority in your redesign, you can do have the kitchen of your dreams.
Here is a kitchen I took from the typical 1990's colonial oak and transformed into a more modern French Country design.
This kitchen is very large and has some beautiful glass front panels in the island, bottom cabinets and top cabinets on the refrigerator side. These cabinets were being lost due to all the monochromatic color of the cabinets against the oak flooring.
To open up the kitchen we decided to remove the bar top area and have one big counter height top for parties and seating.
The kitchen cabinet design was all level across the top (This is the dreaded dust trap above the cabinetry- will talk about this in another blog post.) with a built in microwave above the cooktop. Moving the microwave to the island to built out a large hood would have been a wonderful upgrade but also very costly. When upgrading your home there are so many projects you want to tackle. This client had other areas within their home that they wanted to upgrade so I came up with a budget friendly solution.
The counter tops were definitely a priority here and a new cooktop. They also wanted to add undercabinet and up lighting, a decorative backsplash and all new hardware.
This client was drawn to the all white kitchens that have been so popular. The only issue was that they did not want to redo the hardwood floors. The flooring is expansive throughout their lower level of the home and the cost was not in the budget. Painting the lower cabinets white would accentuate the yellow tinted flooring and your eye would be drawn to it when entering the kitchen. After a discussion, I told them a French Country Black & White kitchen would be gorgeous. Painting the lower cabinets black would ground them and also make the floor less prominent.
Here is a progress pic of the butlers pantry with the new hardware , Calcutta Quartz, and progress on the beautiful backsplash. The holes where the old hardware was were filled to add this larger scale. This Amerock hardware from build.com has a wonderful color of aged brass with little black sheen. It's called Gilded Bronze. This hardware comes in so many sizes and also has extra large refrigerator pulls. Build.com is a great resource for many different types of renovation needs. The farm house sink was also purchased by them.
The kitchen is very functional and had a great placement for all the appliances. Eventually they will replace the refrigerator with a Cafe Black Fridge with gold handles.
You will see why when the completed kitchen is revealed.
Cafe Appliances allow you to choose the handle color that you want and give the illusion of a cabinet front appliance.
I love all the colors you can choose.
I tackled the area of the microwave by taking the existing cabinet and adding a box over it to give the illusion of a hood. It also took away the all level look of the cabinets and gave it some much needed movement. This was a more budget friendly solution than moving the microwave and getting a custom hood built and gave more room in the budget to add lighting and large crown molding.
The bar height counter has been removed and Farmhouse sink added. This made the kitchen more open and also allowed more natural light from the sunroom.
Now for the final reveal and some before and after pictures to show how far this kitchen has come.
Before & After: Refrigerator side of kitchen.
Painting this interior section black gave it the look of a built in instead of the typical white cabinets on top and black on bottom. It broke up the white and really allowed the backsplash to pop.
Before and After: High Top Counter Top Removal to extended Counter Height
This totally opened the kitchen up to the Sunroom. The picture does not show the massive this extension is.
Before & After: The hood came out better than imaged. The cabinet was extended all the way to the ceiling and made the kitchen look even larger. Adding the larger 6" crown molding to the top and to the top of the existing cabinet made the kitchen more grand. Just adding the large crown is an easy way to update your existing kitchen. It makes the cabinets themselves taller and fills that space above them. No, you do not have to put signage or plants on top. LOL
Reveal Time:
View from the Sunroom
Built In Look
Butlers Pantry - decided to go black on top and bottom. Love how it turned out.
Well, there she is, the heart of the home. A kitchen anyone would love to spend time in. I hope you enjoyed reading about this renovation. It does not happen as quickly as HGTV and a lot of decisions have to be made on the fly. You run into areas that either the design does not work or the client wants to go into another direction. Being flexible while you renovate is always the key.
Here are a few shots of my clients enjoying their new kitchen. Having family and friends to your home is why we have a home. Not for it to be a showroom but a place where you build memories
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