Kitchen Reveal

I am so excited to finally share the finished kitchen photos with you all! Here we go!

The breakfast bar used to be over near the stove. When it was there, the chairs blocked the doorway into the dining room, so we tore out a small wall and changed the layout.

The babygate on the right is just pressure-mounted and blocks off part of the kitchen so that Penny can play in the back area away from the stove while we are cooking.

The two large drawers next to the sink are amazing. I'm so glad we went with giant drawers instead of base cabinets here. They are perfect for holding baking dishes, mixing bowls, and things of that sort.

I love the glass cabinets. We decided to do just the two in glass so that we could display our pottery and glassware and then hide all the things that aren't as pretty in the solid cabinets.

Josh built the shelf for our coffee machines because he hates to have appliances on the counter. He used trim pieces from the cabinet company so that everything matches. You may notice that there's no microwave in our kitchen. I'm planning a separate post on this issue, but basically we've decided to go microwave-free. Although I think it's a great decision for our family, we know that anyone who might buy our house in the future may not share the same sentiment. The coffee shelf will be usable as a microwave shelf for others if they so choose.

The apron farm sink is not only beautiful but makes washing things like cookie sheets and frying pan a breeze. Everyone asks if we miss having a divided sink, but we never fill the sink with water, so this works much better for us. If we need to wash little Penny things like baby dishes or pump parts, we just use a mixing bowl set inside the sink for soaking.

It was important to me to choose a lead-free faucet. Why on earth they allow lead in faucets is beyond me, but this one is lead-free. The silvery faucet is attached to a water filter. It's so nice to have filtered water at the sink instead of messing with the Brita in the fridge.

 


This fridge and freezer are actually two separate units made to look like one huge professional unit. We got a great deal on the freezer on clearance and were able to buy the matching fridge. They are counter depth but twice as wide as a standard side-by-side unit. We have vertical racks in the cabinets above the fridge to store cookie sheets and small appliances.

The glass subway tile was a bit of a splurge at $15/sq ft, but I think it looks fantastic! I mentioned these counters before, but they are made from re-purposed glass bottles and are a much greener choice than quarried granite. The range has a baking drawer in the bottom. It's a mini oven great for a single cookie sheet or casserole dish when you don't want to heat the whole large oven.

These cabinets function as our pantry, and we keep cookbooks in the one above the desk. They hold a LOT!

Josh doesn't like the look of magnets on the fridge, but I like to be able to hang important papers in the kitchen. He built this message center as a compromise, and I love it! This is actually where the fridge was in the old kitchen.

Here are some shots of the old kitchen for comparison:

You can see where the old breakfast bar was. We slid the stove over to the right and then squeezed the fridge in the back corner.

Here you can see the wall behind the bar stools that we removed.

The old layout made this back part of the kitchen feel like a separate room even though the fridge was back here. It was sort of wasted space without any cabinets and an extra place to sit that we didn't need.

A summary of the changes we made:
new cabinets
tore out a wall
moved the fridge
shifted the stove
new appliances
new sink
new paint color
new flooring
new countertops
backsplash
message center

Green choices that we made:
bamboo flooring
recycled glass countertop
VOC-free paint

That's about it. Hope you enjoy the room and my husband's handiwork. We broke ground Labor Day weekend, and we officially finished Nov 16th. Josh wants you to know that he was out of town for about 2 weeks during that time, lest you think he was slacking off. ;) He is also anxious to hear feedback, so leave us some comment love. Any questions about our renovation? What do you like or dislike? What would you do differently?