After six months, a lot of sweat (mostly Ryan’s), a lot of tears (mostly mine) and an unsettling amount of blood (again, mostly Ryan’s), we have a functional kitchen in our house!
It’s been quite a while since I gave a home update, so I figured it’s due time for another.
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Moving out/ moving in: Settling into our new house and living without a kitchen (I think I can make anything in an air fryer now!)
We’ve been plugging along at our townhouse renovations for about half a year now. The process has been frustrating at times, to say the least. Sometimes it feels like we haven’t made any progress, but then I’ll take a moment to flip through my phone’s camera roll and realized we are actually getting so much done.
The functioning kitchen being the latest, of course!
The kitchen was the first big project Ryan and I decided to undertake in our new home.
In case you need a reminder on where we were at when we first bought the home, some before shots:
It was mostly original to the house, built in the 1980s. The previous owners did add new appliances (including that bulky, oversized fridge that restricted cabinet access and usable counter space), ugly light fixtures and cheap vinyl floors, but the kitchen had the original cabinets (I’d originally wanted to keep and refinish them, but they were splintering and crumbling), low-end and scratched laminate countertops, a very shallow double-basin sink, and a really inefficient layout.
And — where we’re at now!?
It’s still a work-in-progress, so forgive the mess!
Ryan and his dad started by absolutely gutting everything. We got rid of all the appliances, cabinets and countertops. We removed the soffit above the cabinets, hired a contractor to give us a gas connection in our kitchen, and completely reconfigured the layout.
Huge, HUGE shoutout to my YogaSix coworker Mackenzie, who works full time as a home designer, and was gracious enough to give us a free consultation and some advice on reconfiguring the layout of our weird, awkward kitchen to work for us.
Mackenzie also put us in touch with several of the specialists and contractors she works with, which was instrumental in getting all our work done.
We worked with Genesis at our local Home Depot (west side) to design our kitchen, and we could not have been more thrilled. Genesis was absolutely incredible. She went above and beyond to design, price, tweak and order our kitchen cabinets and countertops.
We looked into American Woodmark, KraftMaid and Hampton Bay cabinetry. Genesis rendered and priced out a few different layouts using both American Woodmark and KraftMaid, and Ryan and I settled on the KraftMaid design. Over the course of a few weeks, we stopped in to see Genesis for a handful of appointments where she tweaked the layout, priced out modifications and gave her suggestions and advice to come up with a layout that worked best in the space we had.
Because Ryan and I have drastically different design styles — he loves sleek and ultra-modern, I lean more toward maximalist boho eclectic — we settled on the “Decker” cabinet doors in a two-toned design using both wicker maple and evergreen.
We were able to sneak in several features including toe-kick drawers, custom drawer dividers, open shelving, a sneaky spice cabinet, and a floor-to-ceiling pantry.
While we couldn’t get a few things I’d wanted — like some glass-front cabinet doors, an appliance garage and under-sink trash pull-outs — due to the limitations of our space, Genesis did an amazing job configuring cabinets to ensure we were able to use every inch of our kitchen, including the blind corners.
By removing the soffit, closing the “breakfast bar,” junking the oversized refrigerator, replacing all the cabinets and completely reconfiguring our layout, we were able to triple our kitchen’s storage space and double our kitchen’s usable counter space.
I’m a bit bummed that we don’t have an open concept kitchen/ living room, but it was just impossible to create given the confines of the space we were working with. The wall between the kitchen and living room is load-bearing, so it couldn’t be removed. It’s also the natural place to put a TV in the living room given the layout of the windows and fireplace. Additionally, we had to work around the inconveniently-placed door in the kitchen, which restricted our ability to create a longer L-shaped kitchen, an island or a peninsula.
Rather than go matchy-matchy with the appliances, we went with a mix of stainless appliances that would best suit our needs. We bought a new Bosch dishwasher and fridge, a GE slide-in double-oven gas range (I am so excited to cook Thanksgiving dinner!) with its matching microwave, and a new undermount Ruvati workstation sink.
I’d originally been set on a white farmhouse sink, but after doing a good amount of research into sinks, I decided the functionality of a stainless steel undermount workstation sink would be absolutely unmatched.
We had Cosentino Silestone Blanc Élyseé countertops installed. Genesis actually picked them out for us and she hit it out of the park. We wanted a durable, light stone surface that was creamy and warm-toned with hints of gold and silvery gray that would tie our cabinets in with our stainless appliances, brass hardware and backsplash. I didn’t want anything bold and dramatic since there’s already a lot going on in our small kitchen, and I was adamant about avoiding busy countertop patterns or dramatic veining because I didn’t want to overwhelm the small space. We considered soapstone, bamboo, porcelain and granite before going with the engineered quartz solely due to durability and maintenance.
Time spent sealing countertops could be better spent baking cookies, fight me.
In addition to removing the soffit and closing the breakfast bar, Ryan and his dad installed new can lights in the ceiling (positioned right over the counters!), added several outlets and moved around light/ garbage disposal switches.
So, yeah. In retrospect – a LOT of work in just a few short weeks!
We still have a ways to go. We need to get and install a microwave above our range, and we need to finish cabinet trim, filler and hardware. We also have to finish up our lights and electrical, and new floors, new windows and a new door are also on our list — in addition to paint, decor, blinds, etc.
We also need to pick a backsplash and install it. We’re leaning toward saltillo tile, since it’s a beautiful warm neutral that’s timeless without being sterile. Looking at you subway tile. We’re trying to narrow down the specific tile we want.
But, overall? I have a sink in my kitchen and countertops to cook on. What a dream!
Other than the kitchen, we’ve also been continuing the never-ending game of shuffling boxes around.
Now that out kitchen is finished, we got all the junk moved out of our guest bedroom so we could frame in the duct work that got moved upstairs while we removed the kitchen soffits, reinstall the ugly blinds we acquired, and give it a quick landlord-special paint job using whatever cheap paint the previous owners had stored in the garage.
We’ll eventually get this entire room skim coated and painted to hide all 700 thumbtack holes, but for now, we’re prioritizing function over fashion. More on the logic behind that later. 😉
We also moved out of the loftice, where we were sleeping for a few months, and into the guest bedroom while we skim coated and painted our master bedroom. That work is finally done, so we’ve moved out of the guest bedroom and into the master bedroom.
I gotta say — what a world of difference it makes having four walls and a door that closes. Nobody is losing sleep over the noise from the coffee maker or light from the TV anymore!
I’ll share more photos of some of our other spaces soon(ish) but just wanted to shoot some in-progress photos of our kitchen out there to justify my absence around here.
