My kitchen: Before and After Part 1

One of the reasons I was really excited about buying our house is that I knew some simple updates could make a huge impact in our kitchen.

Our house is relatively small, and the kitchen and eating area is really small. Although our kitchen was well laid out, the finishes and colors were not doing much to enhance the space. the kitchen had been redone about 10 years earlier and all of the cabinetry had been replaced. Since the cabinets were in good shape and high quality, I knew our kitchen was the perfect candidate for a little paint.

So after committing to a palette of grey and white, with accents of celadon and jade green I was ready to go.

Since we were dealing with a small space I knew I wanted to go light and bright. We were lucky to be working with a newly installed backsplash of white subway tile so that could stay, but the flooring, counters, sink, and eventually the appliances would have to go. For those of you that will ask how much of the work we did ourselves, the answer is very little. Although I love a good DIY my time is much better spent earning money working with clients to pay someone to paint my kitchen cabinets, than painting my kitchen cabinets my self. I am lucky to know some great tradesmen through my profession so we were able to get a lot of great deals, but with busy lives and 2 year old, DIY projects were just not on the list for this part of our house.

For those of you wanting to know, here is the breakdown of what was done in the kitchen:

Paint all cabinetry (Benjamin Moore White Dove)

Painted walls (Benjamin Moore Grey Horse)

Install and stain hardwood floors (ebony)

New Carrara Marble counters ( I got such a steal)

New Sink

New Faucet (beautiful detail from bellacor)

New Cabinet hardware (I'll be posting about tomorrow)

Here is what the space looked like before:

And here it a few months ago after most of the work had been completed, but before I decided on cabinet hardware:

Stay tuned for more pretty pictures of the kitchen tomorrow!