Loving the new Kitchen!

Well, as my lack of posting suggests, I haven't had all that much time to cook in my new kitchen, but I am enjoying it when I do get the chance. It will be a crazy fall, so I'm sure my posting will be quite random, but I hope to not be too silent.

Before I - hopefully - get back to posting recipes again, I just wanted to finish up posting about the kitchen and the improvements we made.

First, the cosmetic changes. No more hunter green!

We replaced the hunter green laminate countertops with quartz. I've noticed that the counter tops don't make a huge impact from a distance (they look plain and white), but I love them up close....little flecks of burgundy, brown, gray, etc.

Dupont Zodiaq in Cappuccino

That empty space above the microwave where the vent used to show now has a proper cabinet. Speaking of the wall cabinets, we got rid of the oak and replaced them with maple. We also warmed up the yellow wall color with a warmer yellow.

Wall cabinets: Kraftmaid - Hanley door style in Maple with Toffee finish
Paint: Benjamin Moore - Straw

And no more vinyl flooring with hunter green accents. We now have porcelain tile. This photo also shows that although we were a bit nervous, we ended up with plenty of room between the island and the sink. We were worried it might be a bit crowded, especially since the island has pull out drawers for my cookware and appliances.

Flooring: Florida Tile - Tivoli - Beige
Pulls on wall cabinets: Amerock Swirlz 3" Spiral Pull - Wrought Iron
Pulls on island: Amerock Swirlz 3" Pull - Weathered Nickel

No more fluorescent light box. Now we have recessed lights and 2 pendants over the island.

Pendant lights: Kichler - Wedgeport - Old Bronze

But we also added a lot of functionality.

One thing I'm really loving is my huge sink. The installers joked that we could take a bath in it! It's not quite THAT big, but it is large. My large pots and pans and even my cookie sheets fit completely in the sink, no problem. Before, even a small 12-inch skillet would stick out of the sink and clank the sides as we washed it. Add to it the swan neck faucet and there's pretty much nothing we can't wash in our sink now.

Sink: Elkay ELU 281610
SS, Undermount, Single Bowl
16 x 28 and 10 inches deep
Faucet: Kohler Revival, brushed Chrome

Another added functionality is pull out drawers in the island. I love that I don't have to reach deep inside my cabinets and bang and upend a bunch of stuff to get out the stuff I need. It's a bit hard to fit in all of the stuff I had before, but I'm moving things I rarely use to my pantry closet which is probably something I should have done a long time ago.

And, of course the breakfast bar. Here's our new island from the front. And yes, I am still missing some hardware. I forgot that we'd be going from single doors to double doors, so I was short a couple of pulls! The cabinet to the far left is the trash drawer. I had to give up cabinet space to fit that in, but I'm really pleased to not have an ugly trash can sitting out.

Island cabinets: Kraftmaid - Melrose door style - Peppercorn

On the other side, a breakfast bar. Again, we were quite relieved to see that even though we added seating, we still had plenty of room to walk past. I also painted the door to the garage. When we first moved in it was the dreaded hunter green but we had it painted white. When I went to paint the door leading out to the deck, I was going to paint it white too but then decided it needed something warmer so I decided to pick up the burgundy/cranberry tones of the countertops and I ended up with this color. Much better than plain old white!

Door paint: Benjamin Moore - Chestnut
Dog: Golden Retriever named Bailey :)

Anyway, that's probably more than anyone ever wanted to know about our kitchen! I hope to finish it off by adding more colored accents (playing off the plate hanging over the sink) - mainly gold, cranberry, navy, and green. Perhaps a nice fruit bowl here, a colored utensil crock there a valance for the window, etc.

I hope to get to a garden update something this week too. I'm FINALLY starting to get some tomatoes. I sure hope it doesn't cool off too much yet - it would make me sad to end the season with so many green tomatoes.....so much unrealized potential!

It's done!

The kitchen is officially done! It was actually done this past Monday, but we still had people coming out to finish up a few other projects (trim around garage doors, new shower faucet, etc.), so we are officially done as of today.

It's been a busy week trying to get back into the work routine and I'm still not back into the cooking or blogging groove yet and I'm not sure when that will happen as the next couple of weeks don't show any signs of letting up! Tomorrow we are off to DE/Philly to see Spamalot and then on Tuesday we go down to Hershey to see Bruce Springsteen. I'm VERY excited for both, but especially for Bruce - we're both big fans.

Anyway, before things get too crazy again, a quick post about the remodel. I'll follow up with more details and photos later. Suffice it to say we're loving it - not only for cosmetic reasons, but it's so much more efficient now too.

I posted a lot of before shots on this thread, but I figured we needed at least one side by side shot, so here's BEFORE:

(The wallpaper has been gone for a couple of years, but I just had
to include this shot as the before because this is how it looked
when we bought the house. The guy to right is our realtor - this is the photo
I took when we looked at the house.)

And here's the AFTER:

Of course we would have loved to get rid of the soffit and the white microwave and put in a fancy backsplash, but considering we started this project only planning to do the island and floor, we're pretty ecstatic with the outcome! I never dreamed I'd have solid surface counter tops and an undermount sink.

But it's late and we have to get an early start to get to a matinee show tomorrow.....so it's off to bed.............

Toffee, Caramel, Cappuccino and Peppercorn.

That's not a list of what's cooking in my kitchen, that's the list of colors going in to our new kitchen. Please excuse this rather self-indulgent post, but The Savory Notebook's kitchen is getting a makeover!

And here's why.

Hunter green counter tops. Yuck. Hunter green is fine as a limited accent color, but for something as permanent as counter tops. I can't seem to get away from hunter green. Our first house in Indiana had hunter green carpets and drapes in the bedroom. Double ugh. That's where the cappuccino figures in - we're doing Zodiaq quartz counter tops in cappuccino.

But to really appreciate just how far this kitchen will have come since we moved in, you must see how it looked before we removed the ugly wallpaper.........

That picture was taken as we toured the house with the realtor. The same sort of wallpaper existed in various incarnations in the hallway upstairs and down and in all 3 bathrooms. We paid someone to come in and remove that almost immediately and it's probably the best money we ever spent. It looks much better now.......

It's not just the counter tops with the hunter green, it's in the floor too. See that? More hunter green. The ugly vinyl is coming out and is being replaced with tile.

And the sink. The faucet is so low it's maddening. Pair a low faucet with that divider in the middle and you're talking lots of potential for dish breaking and yes, we've broken a few these last 2 years. We'll put in a stainless steel undermount sink with a large single bowl and a tall faucet with lots of clearance for large pots and pans. I'm sure we'll still break a few dishes, but at least we'll have a fighting chance!

We'll be ripping out all the existing oak cabinetry. The cabinets are in good condition, we just REALLY dislike oak. We'll be doing maple cabinets with a toffee finish. We looked into refacing, and although it would cut the costs by 1/3-1/2, we felt it would be an overall better value to replace. I was also surprised that the finishes available for refacing are quite limited - I wasn't really all that happy with any of the refacing finishes.

We'll also be replacing the island. It's fine as it is for storage, but it's not terribly functional. The current u-shape is nice for looking out into the family room while I'm prepping, but it leaves a lot of unused space between the sink area and the island. We're going for a rectangular design that will include a breakfast bar. I'm so excited about the breakfast bar. We had one for 7 brief months and even bought stools for it. Those stools have just been sitting in our dining room, waiting to be put to use. Other improvements to the island will be pull-out drawers for pots, pans and appliances, a trash cabinet and electrical outlets at either end. The island will be a slightly different style of cabinet and will have a dark, peppercorn finish for a little contrast to the lighter maple cabinets.

Other smaller improvements will include a real cabinet above the microwave. The former homeowners took out the existing cabinet to put in an over-the-range microwave. While I really like the OTR micro (but why oh why did they pick white to go with black and ss???), I'm not so fond of looking at the micro vent. Sloppy work.

We'll also be taking out the brass-rimmed light box and putting in recessed can lighting on either side of the kitchen with two pendant lights over the island.

As you can see from these pictures, we've already gotten rid of the white and brass flying saucer they used to have hanging in our breakfast nook area.

I mean look at that thing.......it just wasn't "us".........

Nothing fancy, but definitely more us.........

Oh, and the caramel. That's a potential wall color. We'll be painting the kitchen and the family room ourselves after everything else is finished - that way we can save a little money and live with the kitchen a little bit before we make any paint choices.

So, that's it. As always, there are so many other things we'd love to do if money weren't an issue - like tearing out the soffit, replacing the white microwave, the ceramic stove (I prefer gas) and the dishwasher, but we're already doing a lot more than we dreamed we'd be able to, so no one's complaining. The appliances can be done a little at a time as budget allows. Of course DH likes to occasionally talk about blowing out the wall and expanding out......but that's just "if we won the lottery" talk..........

The contract is signed and hopefully work will start at the end of July. After that, there's still that darned hunter green sink in the half bath downstairs...........