I'm in love with our kitchen. Our kitchen is a great example of mixing high end items with budget to end up with a kitchen that is gorgeous. The trick to this kitchen was finding areas of the renovation that we could do ourselves (demolition, painting, cabinetry building) and picking certain things to splurge on to give it a wow factor (having hardwood installed, going for Quartz counters). We were given two major things as gifts - the faucet, and the hardware. We were also given a discount on our appliances, but everything else we got at retail. The mix of big box store and luxury items gives a pretty spectacular result.
There were some tricky things to work around. I knew from the start I wanted to extend the base cabinetry into the eat in portion of the kitchen, which is higher than the rest of the house (in the above photograph you can see the step) We had to get a little creative with cabinetry - but everything is possible. We installed a GE Cafe microwave above the oven that has a vent feature - that pulls the steam from the stove up and out into the kitchen. I'll get into our appliances more in another post, but I love having this above the stove.
In the above photo you can see the wall of white subway tile in the background, which I simply adore as it reflects a lot of light from the new pot lights. It also blends in because it is white, like the rest of our kitchen.
When we bought the house the fridge was blocking the doorway to the front hall. We moved the fridge to the eat in kitchen and bought a counter depth GE Cafe Fridge (more on the appliances later) and we built around it a pantry using Ikea Cabinetry. This made it feel more like the kitchen, instead of the fridge just being plunked into a different room.
The design inspiration for the cookbooks above the sink came from a Kitchen Cousins Episode on HGTV. I loved the idea, as it was a perfect spot for my cookbook collection that has been gifted to me by my Mom. That faucet. OH that faucet. It's the most gorgeous thing on this planet. It's a Perrin and Rowe and my favourite thing ever.
Anyhow, that is our kitchen reveal. While we've been finishing up the kitchen I've been working on posts that actually get into 1. Ikea Kitchen Shopping tips 2. Where we bought everything. So stay tuned, but if you have questions I'll do my best to answer.
I hope you like it as much as we do!
xo Lindsay