Our Modernized Kitchen (Before and After)
The journey to getting our kitchen done was an interesting one. It was a two week project that was supposed to be completed by the end of April, but due to restrictions caused by the pandemic, we had to delay it a few months. Luckily, things went smoothly and everything was complete just shy of our baby’s due date (who ended up being a week late anyway).
I received a lot of questions about our kitchen when I shared pics on Instagram, so I’ll put the info here for everyone to access.
Design elements.
Will and I put the final design together ourselves, drawing inspiration from Instagram, Pinterest, and Google. We knew what we liked, so it was easy to search for inspo pics.
Black hardware and a plain/modern kitchen was a must for us because this style matched the rest of our home.
We also opted for the same flooring, trims, and baseboards throughout the house for flow. The continued flooring also made the connecting rooms look bigger.
A completely black and white kitchen + stainless steel appliances seemed a tad cold, so to warm it up, we added floating shelves in natural wood.
To create the illusion of high ceilings and add more storage space, we removed the kitchen soffits (boxy bulkhead between the ceiling and cabinets). Not all soffits can be removed, so we had to check what was behind it first.
I’ve always wanted a barn door and thought this was the perfect place to have one. The room was used for laundry previously, but it was loud and didn’t make sense for us on the main floor. Instead, we created storage space and turned the room into a pantry (or our “convenience store”, which is what I like to call it).
Kitchen island and breakfast table.
The island and dropdown table are connected to each other and permanently glued to the floor. The extended table elongates our kitchen and provides a bright seating area for 5-6 people. The garbage, recycling, and compost bins are all hidden in one easy pull-out with four compartments in the island. We wanted a black island for contrast and to create separation between the kitchen and breakfast table.
Appliances.
Because I like consistency, we purchased all of our appliances from Bosch. They’re all from the 800 series and in stainless steel. We’ve been using them for a couple of months now and have no complaints.
Chimney hood (black stainless steel)
Where did you get . . . ?
Since we knew we’d be spending a lot of time here, we were determined to get what we loved so we sourced a lot of the things ourselves. I’ll link to what we bought below. If I didn’t provide a link, it means our contractor sourced it and we have no idea where it was purchased from.
Backsplash.
Up until the renos, we were still undecided on the type of backsplash we wanted. The original plan was to do an entire one-piece marble-patterned wall, but we thought it’d be too plain in an already plain kitchen. We then wanted chevron tiles, but didn’t like the options out there (too big/small, shiny/dull).
Next up, rhombus. I even did an IG poll for this, but the results were evenly split. Plus, we already had this somewhere else in the house and didn’t exactly love it in the kitchen.
We eventually stumbled upon the “Oriental White Polished” marble tile at Olympia. The tiles were displayed like brickwork, but we wanted to use them in a herringbone pattern. Herringbone patterns usually come arranged with small tiles on pieces of 10” x 11” mesh and while we could’ve gone with this, we decided to use the larger individual tiles (3” x 12”) we found. This resulted in more work and attention to detail for our contractors, but it was all worth it because we LOVE the end result.
More pics please!
I’ll be sharing more pics on my Instagram page, so please follow along there! : ) If you have more questions, the fastest way to reach me is through IG comments or DMs.