We are officially done with our mini kitchen reno and we are so happy with how everything turned out! It is amazing how different the kitchen feels now and I just love how bright and airy it is. While we were in the process of making all of our selections I spent a ton of time on blogs and Pinterest looking for ideas and links so I wanted to share all of our information for anyone else that may be doing or considering something similar. You’ll see that I’ve linked all of our selections at the bottom of the post.
We had been talking about doing some kitchen updates for years and like many people staying home a lot more due to Covid seemed to amplify all the feelings we had in wanting a change and we finally decided to bite the bullet. We actually loved a lot of things about our old kitchen so we knew we didn’t need/want to make huge layout changes but mostly wanted to change things cosmetically to fit our current style. We built our house about 8.5 years ago and the cabinets are good quality so we felt like choosing to paint them was the right call and a huge money saver versus replacing them. The changes we decided to make were:
- Painting cabinets white and island a medium gray
- New pendant lights – taking three down to two
- New single basin sink and faucet
- New gas cooktop
- Moving microwave and adding a hood
- New cabinet hardware
- New countertops and backsplash
Here is a before and after picture of our kitchen at the same angle:
A big decision we needed to make in the beginning was whether we would hire a contractor to manage the whole project or if we would do all of that ourselves. I went back and forth on that a lot but ultimately we decided to go the contractor route and I am so happy that we did! Making all the selections was already stressful enough so I’m glad we didn’t have to find all the different vendors and mange all of their timelines too. Bear Group came recommended to us from our cabinet painter and they did a great job with managing everything and giving us lots of advice and tips along the way.
We also weren’t sure if we wanted to hire a designer – we kind of knew the direction we wanted to go but also quickly realized that it can get really overwhelming with all of the different decisions and making sure they all tie together in a cohesive way. After narrowing down most of our selections based on our own design styles and preferences we ended up meeting with Emily from Crisp Interiors to have an in-home consult to help us make our final decisions. She spent two hours with us looking over things and it was incredibly helpful to have someone with such a great eye for design and experience confirm the decisions or point us in a different direction. Thankfully we were on the same page with almost everything but she did give us a few different ideas such as doing brass hardware on the cabinets and I am so glad that we made that change! Brass really warms up a white kitchen and it perfectly ties into our pendant lights.
One of the biggest changes we made was moving the microwave from over the gas cooktop and adding a hood. The microwave is now in a cutout inside the island so it’s less of a focal point now. I just love the look of a hood and I think it makes such a big difference in the overall feel of the kitchen.
I think my favorite part of the whole kitchen is the backsplash. It’s probably the item that I stressed about the most and honestly think I looked at every tile shop in Charlotte. The one we chose has a nice mix of color variations without being too bold and we thought laying it in a herringbone pattern would bring a little something extra to the design. It also has a little texture/wave which adds some depth to it.
There were definitely some inconveniences with the reno in terms of going a few weeks with only partial or no use of our kitchen which was hard with little kids. One of the best things we decided to do was leave twice while the work was going on to visit my family so we were completely out of their way during the work. This reno really didn’t feel big enough to need to move out but it definitely helped getting away a little bit so we could utilize my parents kitchen. Overall we made it work and I’d do it all over again knowing what we’d get out of it!
Below I’ve listed out all of the links to the items in the kitchen and I’m happy to answer any questions you may have on the process. I’m also going to post a video tour of the kitchen on my Instagram stories and you can check that out at my account here.
Info and Links:
Cabinet Painter: Amber with Repop
Contractor: Bear Group Construction
Design consult by: Emily at Crisp Interiors
Cabinet Color: Snowbound by Sherwin Williams
Island Color: Cape May Cobblestone 160% by BM