Kitchen Reveal

I meant to finish this before moving onto the cruise posts, but oh well.

I have clearly done a pretty poor job of documenting house progress. I know I haven't shown pretty much any room finished, but that's because I feel like there aren't any rooms that truly are finished. The one exception is the kitchen.

Andy and I both adore our kitchen. There isn't much we would change about it.

Not only is it beautiful (at least to us), it's pretty darn functional. I have oodles of counter space and storage, and overall the flow works well. I talked about my kitchen wish list in this post here, and I think we've pretty much nailed it.

White cabinets were something I always wanted, because they are so fresh and clean looking, but still traditional. Ours aren't a bright white, but rather an ivory or cream. I always envisioned more of a white, but this is the whitest color they offered. I'm still happy with the look. I also like the look of a classic shaker door, but with some detail. This design was a perfect marriage of the two. The navy wall color is pretty bold, but it came out exactly how I wanted it to. I wanted a high contrast color to break up the white. Not very many houses have bold navy walls, but almost everyone who's visited our house comments on how they like it.

Dura Supreme Cabinetry - Chapel Hill Door

The countertops might be my absolute favorite thing of all, though. We knew we needed to get formica countertops for budget purposes, but that didn't mean they had to be ugly. We saw a sample in passing at our local home store and it had been our number one choice since day one. It is the perfect way to connect the cabinets and wall color. The pattern keeps with the bright kitchen feel, but also looks higher end (to me atleast).  The countertop never looks dirty, I love the edging that we ended up choosing, and it just plain works.

Stools from Great Escape found here

I also love the look of the stools at the island. They are perfect and give the room a touch of modern. The stainless steel matches the appliances and also the light fixture above the island. Oh baby, do I love that fixture. We found it on sale at the KBL store and from the minute I saw it I knew it would be perfect. Andy disagreed, but after a return trip I finally convinced him that we needed to take it home with us. We also have a lot of pot lights throughout the kitchen, which are great for brightening the room up. Good lighting can do wonders..

The floors on the other hand give me a bit of grief. We spent months it seems going through flooring, and none were what I had envisioned and were within our budget. This one seemed to be the closest thing to what I wanted, so we went with it. It's an engineered hard wood. I love the look of it, however it is impossible to keep clean. Since it's dark, it shows pretty much everything, but I also think it's worse because there isn't really a finish on it. I can mop the floor and as soon as my clean bare feet put a toe on those floors there is a mark. I've given up. Mopping doesn't help. Footprints are more prominent since so much light shines in from the sliding door. Thankfully, they aren't visible at night.

I should note that in all the designing of this house, the things I chose from instinct are the things that work the best. The stools, countertops, and light fixture were all things I had to have from the minute we saw them, and I couldn't love them more. There are other items (especially in other rooms in the house) that I 100% settled on for the sake of having to choose something, and those things just don't work. I have learned that taking your time and waiting for the right products/items is best, but that's really hard for people like me and Andy who are impatient and want things done now.

I should mention that all of our cupboards are full. At least full in the sense that they all have items stored away, but are not overflowing. It's the perfect amount of space. I will probably do separate posts on the appliances and organizing because that's just opening a whole 'nother can of worms.

We also have to work on getting a little desk for underneath our command center. I don't like having the pens and papers and coin bucket on the island counter, but right now there is no other convenient place to put them. I'm on the hunt for a fuzzy rug to put in the open space in that area, too. I am still perfecting the rest of the staging of the countertop and bookshelves. I don't like counter clutter, but the compost bin, utensil bin, olive oil, and paper towels have nowhere else to go. I need them to look like they belong. The bookshelves are fine for now, but I'd love to more effectively use this space for seasonal decorating. On the opposite end, I keep my iHome, cooking books, and recipes. I will eventually come up with a more efficient way of storing those, too. Will our to-do list ever be complete??


Check in tomorrow for more of a run down of our cruise in the Bahamas!