Hello! I hope you guys had a great weekend! Ours was a perfect blend of productive and relaxing! My plan was to wait to share our kitchen until it was finished…like finished finished…but as it turns out, everything under the sun is back ordered due to Covid so although a few things will be tweaked in our space (pendant lights and bar stools), I decided to share where we’re at now! Which is a place I am deeply happy with! I’ve also been receiving tons of DM’s asking about colors and finishes so I thought it would be best to get it up in case any of you are undergoing similar projects in your homes.
I should start by saying that Austin and I have NEVER done a project like this before. In Chicago, Austin had a condo which was new construction that I moved into prior to our move out West. We then lived with his parents for a year and a half when we moved out here to save money (California real estate is very expensive) and then purchased our first home which was also new construction. While we have always gravitated toward new construction (we met in our early 20’s selling new construction for Pulte Homes!), our current home was not new construction (although it only had one previous owner) when we purchased it. For some reason though, this home felt right. I remember walking through it with Griffin who was just a few weeks old at the time and it wasn’t even on the market yet. The sellers were willing to sell to the right buyer and Austin and I just felt like it was right for us. I remember parking on the side of the road to nurse Griffin after walking through it and saying…this is the house for our next stage of life.
We love this home so much- the floor plan, yard and size are so perfect for us and the previous owner had amazing taste (I give her all of the credit for our floors which I get asked about constantly!). The one thing we didn’t love were the countertops. Shortly after moving in (almost 3 years ago), we got several quotes to update the countertops and backsplash and while we loved the idea, it just got put on the back burner…it was difficult to wrap our brains around spending the money when we knew this wasn’t our forever home. Once Covid hit, we got serious about the decision to move forward with the project. Even if we sell, updating a kitchen will always be good for resale value. Not to mention the fact that we were spending more time than ever at home and in the kitchen. We decided to give the kitchen a small refresh to make it a place we truly loved.
Let me be the first to tell you that a project like this can quickly become a runaway train…”well we’re doing the countertops so we may as well paint the cabinets too” are the exact thoughts we avoided. We wanted to ONLY tweak the things we didn’t love versus throwing ourselves into an entire kitchen overhaul. So that’s exactly what we did! We ran into one hiccup which was with our plans to do a waterfall island (which is basically when your stone countertop continues down the sides of your island like this). It turns out the previous owner had our floors installed after the island was put in so to make a long story short, adding a waterfall island would have meant we would need to replace some of our flooring planks and have to cut into the drywall of our island. I was bummed because in my mind, that waterfall island was everything. Remember what I said about the runaway train? I didn’t want to pay a flooring and drywall guy…our plan was for a simple refresh. So in an effort to stick to the plan, we skipped the waterfall island and kept it moving!
What We Did: replaced countertops and backsplash, replaced double bowl sink for single bowl, added a new brushed brass faucet and brushed brass hardware.
What We’re Going to Do: swap out our barstools and pendant lights.
Our entire project took 6 days and we LOVE how it turned out! While it felt like a TOTAL pain some days (not having a kitchen with a family of 4 was challenging), it was totally worth it. I’m sharing as much info as I can for you in this post but if you have any questions or if I missed anything, please let me know! xx
Quartz Installer: Ghiloni Granite
Backsplash: Daltile 3 x 6 Subway tile in Bright White with white grout
Quartz: Arizona Tile quartz in New Venatino White
Paint Color: White Dove by Benjamin Moore (our entire house is this color)
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