When we moved into our house, the kitchen looked like this.
Clean, bright and well-staged, yes. But it lacked vibe and I believe in kitchens that make you FEEL something. After all it’s the central gathering place for most families and I wanted some character in it — some warmth, welcome and a touch of farmhouse aesthetic.
We didn’t chronicle every step of the process because our kitchen redo predated this blog, so I’m just going to show before/after shots and tell you what we did to bring in that warmth and character.
Here is our kitchen today.
From another angle, here’s a before shot.
And after.
Here’s what we did:
1. Bought a refrigerator. Naturally. Because it’s kind of important for this room to have one. We went for the counter-depth fridge so it wouldn’t protrude into the walking space of the kitchen and I’m oh, so glad we did this.
2. Put in black granite countertops. (We hired a friend’s company and they did an excellent job!)
3. More than doubled the size of the island to accommodate seating for four, and moved the chandelier to be centered over the island. Hubsy drew up the plans, found the new table legs online and hired a carpenter to build the extended table frame and attach it to the legs. We LIVE on this island.
4. Changed the hardware on the cabinets from knobs to handles.
5. Installed a beadboard backsplash. Hubsy did all the work on this and it remains my favorite feature of this kitchen. It pulls in the farmhouse feeling I’d been wanting.
6. Put in a new sink and faucet hardware.
Here’s another before/after:
And now, here are waaaay too many after shots, but hopefully something will inspire you!
You can learn how to make the faux roman shade here.
