Kitchen Remodel

Porch & Rose
Apr 9, 2024
3 min read

I'm the type of guy that loves a good house project. I may not be the handiest with a tool, but I'm great at design, and love an opportunity to transform any space. My husband, on the other hand, is the move-in ready type, so when we toured our home, I knew it would be a challenge to convince him to make an offer. Why you ask? Well, because our kitchen looked like this...

And this...

But, I knew the home had great bones and great curb appeal, so the biggest challenge I was facing was getting him to say yes to the house. Remodeling would be a breeze.

So, first and foremost, everyone has a budget.

Let me Repeat, Everyone has a Budget.

When you're faced with the constraints of a budget, I look at the space and determine what bothers me most vs. least so I can phase out the project and spend maybe $2,000 this month, $3,000 in a few months, and $6,500 by the end of the year. The key is choosing what items you can live with temporarily, and what items need to go now.

Phase One

If your current kitchen has great cabinets, and by great, I mean, solid wood, KEEP THEM. Cabinets, today, are built from an engineered wood, and depending on the veneer quality, can peel over time due to heat. Our kitchen cabinets are solid wood, so I wanted to keep them, but I didn't like the "Z" shapes that were applied to the face of the cabinets, and removed them as they didn't provide any structural integrity whatsoever.

I love a two-tone kitchen. Just remember: Your base cabinets should always hold the bolder color, while your upper cabinets should be light in color.

I knew I wanted a blue and white kitchen, but choosing the right shade of blue required samples to be painted on the surface. I originally wanted more grey in the blue, but if your kitchen has very little daylight like ours, the grey-blue will read more like black, and I wanted this blue to pop.

Below are the paint colors we selected:

Base Cabinets - Sherwin Williams Dress Blues - SW 9176
Upper Cabinets - Sherwin Williams Pure White - SW 7005
Choose a Lacquer Paint as it works best for solid wood, but will require a spray gun as it's very thin in application.

It's important to note:

During Phase One, I kept the original white appliances, laminate countertop, and tile backsplash. However, I used a tile paint that matched the white cabinets to paint the existing tiles.

For the Cabinet Hardware, I found this great Champagne Bronze Handle that can be found at your local Home Depot.

Liberty Mandara 3 in. Champagne Bronze Drawer Pull P27940C-CO-C

Phase Two

We removed the tile backsplash and laminate countertop. Additional reinforcement was added to the base cabinets as the new countertop was Quartz and had more weight than the original laminate. I should note that we tried to save the original tile backsplash. However, due to the varying depths of laminate and quartz, we would've had a gap between the new countertop and original backsplash. Therefore, we made the judgement call to replace the backsplash with subway tile.

Remember my advice from earlier? Choose the items you can live with the longest. For us, we kept the white appliances in order to help spread out the budget.

Phase Three

The Kitchen Island.

Our kitchen had very little counterspace, and we realized there was an extra room off the kitchen that could either be a Keeping Room (Secondary Living Room) or a Breakfast Room. Without hesitation, we thought it made the most sense to expand the kitchen into the current Breakfast Room and let that extra room with the fireplace be a flexible space for additional dining or living. I reached out to an independent wood worker on Etsy, and had a custom island (painted to match) shipped to our house within months.

Phase Four

Out with the White, In with the Stainless. If you can wait on purchasing appliances, I found that February is appliance month, at least that's what my technician told me. We waited, and found a great bundle deal with Whirlpool for our range, refrigerator, dishwasher, and microwave.

It was now time.