kitchen remodel: choices.

Now that you’ve seen the before and after, let’s talk about how we got there.  We didn’t use an interior designer, or a kitchen designer or any such thing.  The kitchen is a mix of online inspiration, the best deals we could find, and a few splurges on certain things that mattered.

Originally, I thought I wanted white cabinets.  Problem:  Oak grain.  All the examples I saw of oak grain painted white or cream were, well, too grain-y.  And the interesting thing is, I don’t actually mind wood grain in painted cabinets, in fact I quite like it, only white paint plus oak grain rubbed me the wrong way. Enter black.  The other classic color.  Black is the new white, right? The other possibility was gray, an awesome Gustavian gray, maybe.  This got nixed because my entire house is painted some sort of gray, in different shades and tones.  I love gray SO much, but didn’t want too much of a good thing.  I don’t want to get sick of it!

So, black it was.  Then, I wanted to add visual interest to the existing cabinets.  If you recall, they  were kind of flat on front, except for a border.  Well, our cabinet guy (Carl Lee from D’Amato & Lee – woodworking genius who installed our beams for us) suggested new doors and crown to update the look.  Getting new unfinished oak doors with more detailing was amazingly affordable: about $500 $750 for our entire kitchen.  We did keep the original drawers which are flat.  I painted a test drawer and pulled together hardware and fabric from the living room for inspiration:

The verdict on the test:  needed a blacker black. This sample is Onyx by Benjamin Moore (we used their Satin Impervo for the cabinets).  There is a red undercoat which I lightly sanded through to around the edges.  More on that tomorrow…

I was the queen of hardware samples during this project.  Always trying to find the coolest hardware for the best deal!  We ended up using crystal for the glass doors, the art deco knob for the other doors and the bin pulls for the drawers.  Sources at the end of this week (a complete list, hopefully).A sample of the new cabinet door – see all the extra detail with the raised paneling and beveling? Much more substantial feeling and heft to them, also.

The new footprint which we created in the kitchen involved tearing down a raised ledge that separated the sink and counter from the living room area (seen in the before pictures).  I just hated fiercely this oak border:

Not to mention that the raised portion really broke the room up in an odd manner. So we wanted to flatten the counter and widen it also. Here’s a comparison of the old vs. new footprint:

Okay, so in that second drawing, you probably noticed the fancy marble counters,”Christopher Peacock” Style Corners, Ogee Edge, blah, blah, blah.  This was my dream kitchen, I never thought it would become a reality. Christopher Peacock, in fact, was my dream kitchen designer.  Take a look here at his work, and also at this very helpful post:  Elements of a Christopher Peacock Kitchen. Dreamy, right?  And how many times can I use the word “dream” in a paragraph?

Well, the dream did come true:  honed Carrara marble was much cheaper than we thought it would be, about the same per square foot as granite.  We did have to look high and low to find honed (not polished) slabs in Northern California, finally finding them at Bedrosians in Sacramento.

Here’s a brief aside: every one, and I mean every one and their brother, tried to tell us that marble was a bad idea for the kitchen.  “It stains.” “It chips easily.” “It etches.” “High maintenance.”  My thought was, they’ve been using it in Italy and Greece for thousands of years, and it still looks pretty good! Our marble, one year later, has not stained even once.  It has etched, a look we knew would occur, we’re happy with the “lived-in” look of marble.  It has a few small ding marks from me dropping the iron paper towel knob on the counter.  I like these too!  The maintenance could not be lower.  Clean your counters when they are dirty, simple as that!  Most of all, I love the feel of marble… cool on a hot day, almost soft, smooth, old, lived-in, and begging for a pie crust or pizza dough to be rolled out on it.

Ahem, back to the slabs – we found them:

Yay!  Now, could we construct the beautiful Peacock-esque corner?  With Carl’s help and the computerized fabrication of our marble by Benchmark (here in Chico) we could!  Based on my lowly drawings, Carl produced this:

And Benchmark computer-templated this:

Which then became this, finally:

Aren’t they just soft and velvety and elegant?

So, we went from tired oak/tile to detailed black painted moulding and white marble.  Other changes to the kitchen included the floors (to handscraped walnut like the rest of the house was getting), two pendant lights replacing recessed cans, soft gray paint on the walls, a (six burner! – splurge) range with proper vent hood, new dishwasher, new pull-down faucet and a farmhouse sink.  I’ve always wanted one.  The most famous farmhouse sink is by Shaw, it’s very beautiful, but cost over $1000 bucks, which was a lot more than we wanted to spend.  After searching online, we took a risk and bought one made by Belle Foret, which cost less than half of the Shaw price.  It’s been perfect in every way, aside from having no Shaw’s logo I’m not sure you could tell the difference.  I love the deep simple roominess of it:

Bet you didn’t know there are actually dirty dishes in the sink in that picture! Yup.  Two coffee cups and the remains of Cameron’s breakfast.

Things we did not change or replace: the wall oven and microwave.  They were both working fine and we just couldn’t see changing them out because we didn’t like their color (white).  Now, a year later, I proclaim the oven’s days to be numbered because it won’t hold a temperature for me any more!  Chocolate chip cookies have been ruined en masse… the temp. swings by about 40 degrees over or under.  We also didn’t replace the fridge, it’s fine, great, awesome too. Didn’t need a fancy-schmancy stainless or built-in model.

Come back tomorrow for the painting fun!

P.S. – If you have any questions about the remodel you’d like to ask, fire away!  I’ll try to be as helpful as I can!