Kitchen Renovation: The Big Reveal

You’ve likely seen pictures of our kitchen renovation on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. I thought I’d share some of our progress and experiences along the way. To follow along with us, just check out the hashtag #diylikeachampion on Instagram. This is Part 4 of our renovation series. You can find Part 1, the timeline and demo process, here; Part 2, painting and prepping the cabinets, here; and Part 3, the countertops, here.

This is a little late, but surprise! The kitchen renovation is (mostly) done! Hopefully you guys didn’t think we decided not to finish; it just hasn’t been high on my priority list to write about with the other things we had going on (like getting ready for Clara’s party, renovating our half bath, installing new floor upstairs and painting the rest of the downstairs). It’s actually been practically done for a while now, other than painting, which we finished a few weeks ago. I say the kitchen is mostly done because we have a few more minor things to do: paint the laundry room doors and frame out the area around them and paint the toe kicks and baseboards.

Choosing the paint proved to be more difficult than I anticipated. After going through three paint samples, we finally decided on one we liked. I had my heart set on a sea glass color, but we ultimately decided against it after putting the sample up because we knew whatever color we put in the kitchen would also be in the living room, entryway, stairway and upstairs hallway. That’s basically every common area in our house, hence my indecisiveness on choosing a color. And really, with all the big stuff done, we weren’t in a huge hurry to paint.

We ended up choosing Sherwin-Williams Sea Salt, even though I was convinced I wanted Fleeting Green. Sea Salt ended up being a more neutral color, which I think was needed given the amount of walls that would be covered in it. It’s basically a gray with green undertones, but it looks cooler or warmer depending on the light. (You can see all of the colors I liked on this Pinterest board.)

Sorry for the picture heavy post, but I am so excited to share these photos with all of you and couldn’t resist sharing them all.

The details:

Since my last post, we’ve installed the cabinet hardware and toe kicks and replaced two light fixtures. The hardware and lighting made such a huge difference in really pulling the kitchen together. I’ve had this Whitney Pendant from Pottery Barn since late last summer, and I was so excited to finally get it installed. Our previous sink light looked like a UFO, so you can guess how happy I was to get rid of it.

The dining area light wasn’t as bad as the sink light but still didn’t match the look we were going for. I found a hammered pendant light that I loved, but I wasn’t ready to fork out the $100 for it knowing that it came with a plastic cord. Really? A fancy pendant with a cheap looking cord? No thanks. So I decided to make my own, and we randomly happened upon this hammered bowl at Target. It was $20 for exactly what we wanted. Score! Since it would be near the other pendant, I decided to spring for the matching pendant kit from Pottery Barn but ended up finding it cheaper on Ebay. Double score! We bought a hole saw for our drill and used that to drill the hole into the bowl to have an opening to attach the cord kit. I kind of can’t believe we made this ourselves, and I love love love it.

We went from having no hardware at all to having really nice hardware, which has made such an incredible difference. When I first saw this hardware from Pottery Barn, I was determined to find a cheaper alternative. I couldn’t find any other hammered hardware I liked that cost less than this, so we ended up splurging on this set. Really, given the money we saved by painting rather than replacing the cabinets, we felt we could get away with buying the hardware we wanted (though I waited until I had a 15% off coupon before buying). The color we got is called Vintage Pewter, and it’s the perfect brushed look that we like – not too shiny and not too dull.

The kitchen as a whole:

The changes happened so gradually that it was hard to get the full effect of all of them, but I can totally see it looking at the kitchen now. It came together so beautifully, and we did almost all of it ourselves. I’m insanely proud of us, and I’m totally smitten with the kitchen.

This is our main prep area. You can see that there are some spots where the drywall came off when our old countertops were removed, but these will eventually be covered up with subway tile.

Another view of our prep area. Hopefully we can replace this not-so-great dishwasher with a better, stainless front one soon. We are still loving our LG Hausys countertops, and I love the way they brighten up the kitchen, especially in combination with the white cabinets.

You may remember that this was the area with the cabinet that had mildew under and behind it. Eric built this cabinet and used the existing door to replace the water-damaged one.

This is the view from the dining area into the kitchen and office/playroom, with a bonus shot of Abby resting in a sunny spot.

This is the dining area, complete with IKEA curtains I painted. The wall here is the same color as our office, Sherwin-Williams Hazel.

This is an iPhone pano shot. Not the best quality, but it helps give you an idea of what the kitchen looks like with all the changes.

Sources:

Lighting: Whitney Pendant from Pottery Barn
Hardware: Ella in Vintage Pewter from Pottery Barn
Wall Paint: Sherwin-Williams Sea Salt on main walls and Sherwin-Williams Hazel on accent wall
Cabinet Paint: Benjamin Moore Advance in Cloud Cover
Flooring: Pergo Max in Vera Mahogany from Lowe’s
Countertops: LG Hausys HI-MACS in White Quartz