Getting our new home and kitchen to where it is today has not been an easy feat. We have spent endless time on this house after moving in, even though we built it! We knew this house would be a big "project," but we really could have never guessed how much more time and investment we would need to be put into this place to get it to where we wanted it to be. The kitchen is the perfect example. (Some of you may remember our kitchen renovation that we completed at our last house in 2016 here. I bring this up because we probably would not have wanted such a specific look if we had not just completed that project. But since we were moving out from a home with a kitchen that we dedicated a lot of time in to that we absolutely loved, we wanted to create a space in our new home that was just as special).
I thought it would be fun to share our kitchen through each step of the way at our new home so that you could see for yourselves (on that said example). I'm starting off with sharing the framing and showing you many of the projects that we completed along the way to get it to where it is today. I'd like to preface this post by sharing that our builder had great options for building a home, but in some places they were a little limited. And where they were able to help us to get the countertops, etc, that we loved, they put a major up-charge on them (almost twice as much) and were still unable to install items that we really wanted -- like a soap dispenser, chrome faucet and farm sink. We loved what they offered in a lot of areas of home building, but we also knew before starting with them that we would have to make personal updates in the kitchen to really make it our own. So we went with the basics on granite options with our builders, as it was not optional to not have anything put in and left the kitchen without a backspash. We then had everything lined up and organized to have completed after the keys were ours. I'm sharing the details below.
Here is the kitchen island looking in from the eat in kitchen area. The fridge placement is straight ahead on the wall.
Above is the view of the wall that currently now has the stove and ovens on it. You can also see part of the super pantry framing here as well behind the wall.
Above is the only view I have looking down from the second story to the kitchen. You can see the eat in kitchen to the mid-back right and my office that is behind that.
Above is a picture of the kitchen island area and the eat-in kitchen area with drywall.
Eat-in kitchen
Hardwood Floors boxed up in the eat-in kitchen
Cabinets start to go in! Do you notice the open window cabinets on the upper level? This was one of the first changes we made in the final kitchen.
Notice the vent hood? A second change we made.
Check out the island sides in this picture. Another change we made that you will learn more about below.
Above is the kitchen photographed on the day the keys were given to us! We moved in a week later and the projects commenced. See below!
In the above picture, take note of the stacked cabinets above the vent hood. Take note of the nonexistent island sides and the half-moon granite. Take note of the 2 inch crown molding. Take note of the maroon granite!
The day after the keys were given to us we had the countertops removed, the vent hood removed, the cabinets above the vent hood removed, a fridge delivered, the new countertops around the kitchen went in, and we also had sides for our island made.
Here is a picture our contractor sent us of one of the island sides being made.
Island sides again.
In this picture the vent hood is removed. You can also see the crown molding that our builders included with this home in the kitchen. They do not commonly take their cabinets to the ceiling. We asked them to add double stacked cabinets. We believe they were not familiar with doing trim on double stacked cabinets, as they used a very small one.
Here was the preview of the vent hood we had made. This was when I realized we needed some molding inside of the three pieces of trim on the vent hood to match the detailing in the squares of the cabinets. I also decided we needed something more substantial with the crown molding at this point.
Backslash preview.
Here is the island and backsplash on install day! We took out the stainless steel faucet and sink and added a farmsink with chrome appliances. Here, you can also see the beautiful side panels our contractor made for us! The details are exactly how I had dreamed of wanting them to be! We also squared off the counter tops, as I really love a big workspace in the kitchen. You can hardly tell, but we added a mitered edge to the countertops as well. The island is 2.5 inches thick and the edges of the kitchen are 2 inches thick. This adds a little oomph to the counters, rather than the standard 1.25" thickness.
In the picture above you can see the new crown molding that we had installed. It is 5 a inch molding instead of the 2 inch molding. What a difference it makes in person!
After we were more settled in the house, Jeff installed 56 cabinet knobs and pulls in just the kitchen alone! And another 9 in the super pantry!! We still have more to go all over the rest of the house.. one day.
Next up on the project list was installing these globe pendant lights. I love them! Of course, we had everything ready to be installed over one weekend when the kids were both napping when we discovered that the second glass globe had a mouth that was too large for the holding hardware. The company was very kind and sent us a replacement and we were able to hang the second globe a week later.
A few weeks later we found some time over the weekend to tackle the eat-in kitchen chandelier. It was not an easy feat, but we knew that before we started this project. We cleared out all of the furniture in the eat-in kitchen and got our step ladders and tools ready. Once we opened the box up and the ceiling up we realized that the fixture did not come with the hardware piece to hold it onto the ceiling. This project had to temporarily wait an additional week until we were able to get to Home Depot. The fun of kids and limited free time! (Are you wondering why we installed these ourselves? We had a trusty-friend tell us how easy it was to hang lighting fixtures. We have already installed 13 in our new home and still have more to go. We have preferred to do them on our own because even though it is hard to find the time, it is even harder to schedule so many appointments with little ones and juggling so many baby naps. I am not encouraging playing with electricity, but we did tackle these ourselves and realized that it was indeed fairly simple to attach the white wire to the white wire and the black to the black when we had so many to install..)
Here is what our eat in kitchen looked like as we prepared to get the chandelier installed.
Parker loves helping Daddy.
Here is the BEFORE:
and AFTER:
Thanks for reading along! Comment below if you'd like to know about anything else! Thanks!
This is beautiful friend! Such a lovely job- it’s amazing!
Looks beautiful. You have a great eye for design. We are ready to come over for dinner.