Thursday, July 9, 2015

Kitchen Remodel Update

I've had two requests for updates on our kitchen remodel and finally got around to taking a few pictures last week.

The short answer on the kitchen remodel is that I freaking love it.  I still find myself lovingly patting my counter tops and marveling at my view all the way across the living room from my spot by the stove. I love everything about it- every cabinet, knob, tile, appliance, and square inch of marble.  I seriously wouldn't change a single thing, so even though it was a HUGE hassle I hope to never have to live through again (6 weeks with 3 kids, a late-coaching husband, and no kitchen was truly, truly terrible), it was worth every single terrible, dusty, endless day.

Let's take a tour. I have notes.

Oh, cubbies of my heart.  They remain my second favorite part of the whole project. They are the first thing you see when you walk in from our driveway side door and it is the home of SO MANY things that would be on the floor and piled in corners elsewhere.


I love how perfectly they fit the space and that we saved the window by adding them to the plan and I love most that they hold all the things. I really hate stuff on the floor.

I also love this picture frame I repurposed from our stairway walls in Austin) that I had James spray paint silver and updated with more recent family pictures. See that picture of James and I in the middle? That was our honeymoon in Jamaica 10 years ago- can't wait to get an update!


The pantry is my very number 1 favorite thing. I love that we did the frosted glass door, love the miles of shelving (or 8 feet of shelving; same thing) and the storage for more of the things.


I swear it looks more organized in person than it does in this picture.


And now, the kitchen.  Isn't it beautiful? I still can't believe those above-window cabinets weren't there; that the counter used to end at the sink; the the whole right wall was empty-- so much wasted space!


This is the wall we added- it forms the back of the pantry and now holds our microwave and some new upper cabinets. And after six months of daily use I can say that I LOVE LOVE the double oven. I love the smaller top oven that I use 90% of the time. Its smaller size means it heats up so fast and feels so much more efficient. The bottom oven is great when I need two shelves or am roasting something tall, and I love being able to cook two things at two temperatures (or with two smells- like the chicken for dinner and the cookies for dessert). And I love most that it only takes up the room of a single oven. I can't recommend this style enough. The gas stove is also great- it has the same measurements as our old one, but has so much more usable space, including a fifth burner with griddle. Love. (Also love having a functional microwave that isn't dorm-sized and hidden behind a cabinet)


I specifically designed these two cabinets and I love them. The top one holds my most used spices, oils, and vinegars. It's a good use of small space. The bottom one holds all my cutting boards and baking pans. I had them remove the drawer from the plan so the cabinet would be tall enough to fit my sheet pans in the bottom section and my biggest cutting boards on top. Love them.


We didn't do many custom cabinet features- I was worried about making everything too specific, both for us and future owners. I also didn't want to do too many glass or open cabinets because I didn't want to worry about things looking perfect behind the doors, but I do love our one set of glass door cabinets for our glasses. And I love our little two-open-shelf solution for the cookbooks and a picture frame in the space underneath the upper window cabinets and glass cabinets.


The open end cabinet storage for our lunch boxes and wine bottles has also been great. The lunch boxes never had a good home, and even though there's room in the pantry, I knew the likelihood of them getting put to bed there every night when we knew we'd need them again in the morning was very slim. They do always make it to their cubby and I get to be happy that they're not on the counter.  Plus Cora loves to steal them and carry them on her shoulder like purses and it's so adorable, for once I'm glad something is at her fingertips.


So that's it for special cabinets. On to drawers. I LOVE drawers. I only had four in our old kitchen and now I have MANY. I use them for everything I always hated trying to arrange into cabinets. Like kiddie cups. I LOVE having a drawer for all the plastic cups in our lives. The kids can reach it and get their own water and I'm not wasting space and trying to stand up Cora's weird shaped sippy cups in our cabinets.


I use the bottom drawer of that stack for the plastic plates and bowls, the top drawer has all the little glass containers we use for lunches, and the trash drawer is probably my favorite thing after the pantry and cubbies.


Someday, when plastic divider trays aren't a part of our lives, I can use the drawers for my baking accessories (currently in a bin in the pantry) and loose leaf tea collection. Drawers are the best.

On the peninsula I have drawers for our pots and pans and glass storage. I also love these drawers. Also housed in the peninsula is a stack of four smaller drawers for utensils, measuring cups and spoons, ziplocs, boxes of foil, wax paper, and everything else.



Also the beverage fridge. I love this fridge. It has freed up SO much room in our main fridge by removing all beverages and I love that we're always ready to go when we have people over to swim or hang out. I've also used the shelves to hold a quarter sheet cake and cupcakes for the kids' parties. It is so handy.


Oh wait, another cabinet. I love this giant box on top of the fridge. It now houses all our Costco paper products- kleenex, paper towels, and toilet paper. These items used to live in Cora's closet, which was always a problem we when needed them after she went to sleep, and at some point we were going to need to use that closet space anyway.


Other little things we added and decisions we had to make- we upgraded to the "panel ends" for the cabinets and I'm so glad. It wasn't very much in the overall budget and I think the impact is so much more custom. We also did the panels on the drawers, which I love too. I'm very glad we went for both extras instead of trying to save a couple hundred dollars and regretting it later.


One of my favorite little touches is the plug I bought at Home Depot that has two USB ports built in. We frequently charge our phones here and I like not having the have the little brick using up a plug.

A few people have asked me about having marble in the kitchen. I admit that I fell in love with the look, designed my whole kitchen around it, and then did basically zero research into the material because I didn't want to read anything that would force me to change my mind on using it. So willful blindness was my decorating strategy. And I do love it. I love the great sweeps of movement and randomness in the natural stone and love the clean white background that goes so well with our bright-white-trimmed 1940's house. Design-wise, it makes the kitchen for me, so even when I had some doubts about the softness of marble, I decided to go for it- it was a feature element, and if it was the one thing we regretted, we could change it in a few years to something more durable like quartz or silestone (which are nice, but I didn't love the uniformity and smaller dots/patterns; I love how some of the veins of our marble slab travel all the way across it).

But as it's turned out, marble isn't a big deal. You can't put hot pans directly on it, but you aren't supposed to with marble either. If you leave acids or high-pigment items like tomatoes, citrus, or red wine for too long, they'll stain, but after you clean it, the stain will eventually fade to near invisibility. I chipped an edge of the peninsula with a champagne bottle the first night we moved in and was paranoid after, but further abuse has not resulted in any injuries. I am more vigilant about foods staying out on top of it, but it doesn't bother me because it still makes my inner house designer to smile when I see it. And the few stains just add character that I don't think anyone else can see but me.

Our other big design choice was the two-tone upper and lower cabinets and I really like how that came together. I think all white or all grey would have been too much and I'm SO glad I liked the grey paint we picked out (and by "we" I mean me, with James enthusiastically up-voting whichever one I was liking at the moment; he was actually not very helpful).


And, finally, I love this view. I love coming home at the end of the day and chopping up dinner while the kids color or do homework or just sit and chat with me at the bar. I love that Cora can run her laps and play with her lunchbox purses and I'm not shooing everyone away because I can't open the oven if they're with me in the galley. It's just a kitchen, but it has seriously changed my life.


Update Updated!

While washing dishes this morning I remembered two of my other favorite things: (1) the push button for the disposal, and (2) our low divider sink.


The push button is fun and frees up a switch for something else and the low divider sink means you can wash a sheet pan or giant frying pan without splashing water up everywhere, but I still get my separate sink compartment so all the tiny food storage containers in my life have a place to dry. Everyone is winning.


Also, I got a question about where the cubbies are located. We had them built into the wall we added to create the pantry. That space wasn't used in our previous kitchen, and our laundry room is part of our master suite so we don't have a "mudroom" type space for backpacks and shoes, so I took a foot away from the pantry and had the contractor build in the cubbies for the space when you first walk in the side door. That's the door we use 98% of the time (bc we part at the top of our super long driveway, past the driveway gate), but no one else who visits our house would do so, making it the perfect thing to greet us when we walk in the door.


The kids offload their coats and backpacks and shoes, and I get to smile knowing all that stuff isn't spread throughout the house or on the floor. I literally stood over the contractor's shoulder while he built them because I had such a picture in my mind of what I wanted them to be and they turned out perfectly! And we got to save the side window that was original to the house. Again, everyone is winning.

21 comments:

  1. I think you have the best house on the internet. ;) I covet that big pantry! Thanks for the re-tour!

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    1. Ha, thanks el-e-e!! Great to see (or, "see") you and hope you and yours are doing well!

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  2. I found this post really helpful and interesting. Having a kid (and all his accessories) has forced us to rethink where everything goes in the kitchen and it is neat to see how others have thought through all the storage needs.

    How do you keep Cora from trying to tug the wine bottles out of the open shelves? My 10-month old would be on those in a second.

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    1. Thanks Anon! Shockingly, Cora has never touched the wine bottles. I thought for sure when I loaded them up back in December that it would be for a picture only and then I'd remove them for 2+ years, but she's never really noticed them. I don't know if maybe she thinks they're a permanent fixture, or she's just too distracted by the awesome lunchbox purses that are more in her direct line of vision, but I'm glad it's worked out!

      As for customizing a kitchen for kids, by far the best thing has been using the drawers for all the plastic stuff (cups, lids, lunchbox storage, plates, etc.). And the nice part is that isn't a kid-only customization; I have big plans for those drawers once we're over the brightly colored plastic phase of dining :).

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  3. Your kitchen remodel is so gorgeous and functional! Maybe you should take on part-time interior decorating in addition to part-time barre teaching :)

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    1. Ha, I would LOVE that! I did all the layout, cabinet design, cubbie design, and color choices/decorating stuff myself and I adore how it all came together. I don't know how good I'd be at doing other people's spaces, but I do have strong and decisive opinions about how I like stuff to look for me :).

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  4. Where are the cubbies in relation to all of this? I want some, but can't figure out where they'd go.

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    1. We built them into the outside wall of our new pantry, so they're in the hallway you see that runs to/from our side door (the one we use exclusively to enter/exit the house, despite the fact that we have about 12 exterior doors). That space was just empty and wasted space. So we built two walls to make the pantry and built the cubbies into the otherwise of one, which saved an original window and gave us awesome storage space (our laundry room is off our master suite, so we didn't have a mud room type space). It's hard to describe, but if you click on the link at the top to the original kitchen remodel post, I think it gives you a better picture of the space and where everything is.

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  5. Beautiful! Those USB outlets get so much attention. For such an affordable upgrade, it gets a lot of "that's so baller" reaction from my visitors.

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  6. Beautiful! Those USB outlets get so much attention. For such an affordable upgrade, it gets a lot of "that's so baller" reaction from my visitors.

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    1. Agreed! The box was like $24 at Lowe's and I just love the little modern touch (and its functionality too, of course).

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  7. Looks great. And now I think I need to add a beverage fridge to my kitchen.

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    1. You do!! It has been a godsend so many times already and I find it adorable to look at :).

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  8. Thanks for the info on the cubbies (me again). What are your floor tiles? I think I want them for my master bath redo.

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    1. No problem! And I'm not sure on the details of the floor tiles. I'll look through my notes to see if I can find the name/style!

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  9. I spy a big jam box. Random q - do you and JP agree re music playing during the day? Is music always playing?

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    1. Ha, you have no idea the Pandora's box this question opens for us. Music is one of the only things James and I do NOT agree on. And not just not agree, but disagree so strongly and so sharply that in the whole history of the world's music there are maybe 10 songs we can handle listening to that the other likes. There are 0 songs we both actively like. We also don't agree on when we should be listening to music. I want music on 100% of the time. If I'm awake, music is on. James likes music in the car (and only during short breaks from his usual NPR programming) and when he's working late at night. The only fight we have ever had during the day that the kids actually overheard (and then appeared mildly traumatized by) was over the radio station we were listening to on the drive home from lunch. We seriously STRONGLY dislike each other's musical taste.

      But I love my jambox and if I'm home, and particularly if I'm cooking up a storm in the kitchen, music is on and James is either dealing with it, or, more likely, working in another room or not home :). This is one of the few things his later coaching schedule has been a blessing for- he gets home after I'm done cooking and my need for load pop music has waned.

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    2. This is so interesting -CZ here - we have such similar marriages because I wrote this because DH and I were fighting about exactly this. I am your husband in this case - too much music in the daytime drives me batty. Like 8 am kids are screaming and he turns on Bob Marley. Gah!

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  10. I love the cubbies. But you only have four- and you have a family of five. Does someone have to share his/her cubby? How have you managed to convince your kids put their stuff into their cubbies nicely? My kids throw stuff into their lockers, even if there are hooks and hangers.

    I'm trying to figure out if we can convert our (embarrassingly messy) hall closet into cubbies, but I feel like we'd need at least twice the size since we have so many different conflicting and simultaneous weather systems going on at any given time. Given the (relatively) mild temperatures you have in the south, do you find those cubbies to be the right size? Or do you wish they were slightly bigger, maybe with shelves in the back to separate gloves from hats from socks, etc?

    -Simi

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    1. James and I share ours. We don't have backpacks and I don't keep any shoes in the kitchen, so we really didn't need our own. James keeps his swim bag in the cubbie and I occasionally hang up my purse (it usually lives on one of the kitchen stools, so I'm actually the biggest violator of the "use your cubbie!" rule).

      As for the size- deeper would probably be better if you have a lot of jackets and bags. I find the two levels works well- we keep jackets up there in the off season and then in the winter, we either help the kids hang their coats up, or the bottom hook just gets a workout. I pull the bins at the top (filled with gloves, hats, etc.) down to the bench in the winter so the kids can reach them and that works out well. The bins on the bottom are awesome for shoes- everyone always knows where their shoes are and they can put them on on the way out the door. I found the basic idea for mine on houzz, so I would google around on there for more cubbie ideas, particularly ones with snow boots and mittens showing :).

      As for keeping everything hung up, we're still working on making it a habit, but the kids have gotten pretty good about it. Anytime I see a bag on the floor or on the shelf, and I didn't catch them in the act of walking away and just leaving it there all sad and out of its designated location, I just call them back in to fix it and they can't leave the kitchen until they do. I have hopes for 100% hook hanging by fall :).

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  11. I'm currently in the process of remodeling our kitchen and have been searching for realistic, affordable ideas online for a while. You have inspired me. Since we also have a few small children and live busy lifestyles, we're definitely going to incorporate the cubby system. I also love the frosted doors for the pantry. What a great option to add some style to an ordinary space while also providing a function.

    Essie Reed @ Valley Home Improvement

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