January 14, 2023
Slow and steady wins the race, they say. That was not the case when we built our new kitchen. The pressure was on to get my house sold while the market was still good. We were still sanding sheetrock. I am not sure if Michael had an obsession with getting it perfectly smooth or if it just takes that much sanding. There were some places where the seams weren’t quite right and we would revisit these daily. Dust and more dust was the theme here! What we needed to do was nail down the kitchen layout, cabinets, countertops and everything in very little time.
Like I said before, this was in fact supposed to be our dream kitchen! The days I was able to stay home and not work at the house I was online hunting down all the beautiful materials to make this kitchen the most beautiful kitchen I could image. This was our chance. We were building a new kitchen from scratch. Clean slate! Sure we simply needed a kitchen in this house. Why not make it beautiful? The options were limitless, well, they felt that way in the beginning.
Where to Start
When you begin designing your kitchen, the best way is to go look at newly finished kitchens and find the styles you love the most. I was looking everywhere! The thing is with online marketing out there these days, you can find kitchen ideas in all kinds of cracks and crevices. Every appliance is pictured on a beautiful counter, for instance. Looking at appliance images I would see a cabinet that I had never seen before. As I was shopping for other things for the rest of the house, the kitchen designs were everywhere. So, this is how you do it. Find that cabinet color. Locate those countertops you love. Identify those floors. Pick the color of paint you want for your kitchen walls. Nail down your hardware, etc.
Start imagining what your dream kitchen will look like with all the colors, styles and textures you see along the way. The best resource I found for kitchen design is Houzz.com. Here were actual designers kitchens finished and beautifully photographed kitchens. It feels good to see who’s kitchen these are, where they are located and why they choose the materials they did for their design. Plus, there are many different kitchen styles; whether you prefer farmhouse, modern, transitional, or any style. It is easy to get lost in the process, as I think they are all beautiful. On Houzz, if you are looking to hire designers you can. We were designing our own kitchen, installing it and all. Nevertheless, we had to finalize our choices, soon and get everything ordered. Time was running out, quickly.
Start With One Thing
The kitchen walls were being painted Benjamin Moore Super White. We had picked out the Bellawood Coronado Hardwood floors from LL Flooring and running them throughout the whole house. This was the beginning of our color pallet. I really loved the all white kitchens. Bright white and so clean and crisp feeling! Then there are the moody colors. The grey and greens and all the colors in between. How beautiful are the dark cabinets with the dark quartz countertops? Then you have the white cabinets with the black countertops, contrast and bold. I even was gravitated towards the greens. Green is a relaxing color and it would never disappoint! Plus, a grey and white quartz countertop is perfect over a green painted cabinet. There are so many options.
So, how do you choose your kitchen cabinets? You have to decide if you want painted cabinets or stained cabinets. Natural finish or painted finish. Not just the color, but the way it is finished drives the entire look of your kitchen. Although, I would have loved to go bold I knew Michael wanted neutral colors and ultimately I did want something that was timeless. That is probably why I love the rustic, farmhouse style. It is a lasting look that seemed to fit perfectly for our Forever Country Home. Adding a touch of modern to the design suited us, too. I had already fallen in love with these pendant lights from Overstock that I wanted to put inside the passthrough bar behind the farmhouse kitchen sink. Even when I looked at other lights, I could never get those off my mind. We call them our Flamingo lights, as they remind us of Vegas thrills with the crystal accents.
Starting with one thing, whether a light fixture, hardware color, or narrowing down your theme is your goal when you begin your kitchen design process. You have to have a point of reference in order to continue the process of picking your cabinets and countertops. This makes it much easier to finalize your choices, as there are so many. So, with all the different materials and finishes available, it’s best to pick one thing to begin. It doesn’t seem it would matter what you start with, as everything else will fall into place. We picked the white painted cabinets to start.
So Many Options
At this point, we were already looking for that perfect countertop to seal the deal in the entire kitchen. I still could not get the grey cabinets out of my mind. I did not prefer the painted grey finish, like I did the white painted finish. What I did love is the grey stained cabinet finish! It has the brown wood tones showing through and feels like you spent hours hand staining each cabinet. Now the question is, would the grey stain be too dark? Especially next to the dark floor. The walls are bright white and the floors darker.
Just when you think you have narrowed down your kitchen style something else comes up that knocks you off kilter. The wall tile. My gosh, tiles and more tiles! You could spend months just looking at all the different patterns and colors of tile. I hadn’t even thought of adding another color to the design, until now. There is a popular choice in using multicolored patterned tiles for kitchen back splash and bathroom floors. The white backgrounds with grey, black and beige designs are beautiful. They didn’t just grab me, they pulled me into hundreds of other worlds. The kitchen could look so many ways.
We needed to order our cabinets, though. Enough is enough! It was time make some final decisions. I have to admit, dreaming and imagining is extremely gratifying. I enjoyed picturing our kitchen in all the different colors and styles, as most would have been so pretty. Being so, it’s a job figuring it all out. It is all fun, but it gets serious as money is going out. Once you place that order, there is no turning back. You have to get that order placed.
Staying in Your Budget
Narrow down your options and make a choice. How do you do this? Your budget is the main driver for your kitchen remodel. For most, anyways. However, I can’t deny it. I love patterned tiles! Don’t you just love the bold appeal of a pattern amoungst all the solid colors? We had decided on white subway tile as the price of patterned tiles was way more than our budget permitted. To make the tile more modern we went with a larger size tile and staggered them. To keep the bright white appeal, we went with a white grout. The grey grout in the hall bathroom darkened the look for me. This is where we had already installed our penny tiles above the shower in the guest bath. The grey felt darker and we wanted bright white. I had purposely choose two different grouts (Shhh) in the bathrooms to see which one I wanted in the kitchen. Light grey in the hall bath with dark blue penny tiles, then light grey penny tiles and white grout in the new bath.
In the end, white grout looked best for that farmhouse feel we were going for. The white grout really makes the tiles pop, whatever colors your tiles are. When you are doing white on white, though, it is seamless. I like the feel of when you look across a wall your eyes don’t stop. When it blends and flows the room feels like its wrapping around you. Especially in a smaller sized kitchen. It really opens it up. Point is though, I didn’t realize the grout made such a big difference, but it does.
If you look at all the materials you need and have to stay in your budget then choose the one thing you want to put your money into. Everything is costly. Some thing you may want to budget more than others. We wanted quartz countertops for the kitchen counters. In our business, the Corian countertops we have worked with, have been the most durable and first choice for commercial kitchens. They are easy to maintain and clean. You don’t have to treat them every year either, as you should for some stone materials like granite. We definitely wanted beautiful countertops, however, we wanted the tops to also be easily maintained. Quartz was the best option here. They can be costly and so that was our splurge. Kitchen countertops get a lot of use and lord help me, abuse too. But, it happens, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.
Keeping in Mind your Obstacles
Everything you think you know about life quickly goes out the window when you start your kitchen design process. Michael installs commercial kitchens, but home kitchens are so different. There are more things to consider such as the angles in your room. Is your floor level? Are the walls level? How will you install these cabinets across that one wall, or in the corners even. Will you need cabinet filler pieces to make it fit properly? Are you taking the cabinets all the way to the ceiling? What trim will you use above the cabinets and on the walls. Will they match, or not? Are you painting the trim the cabinet color or the wall color, if it is different like ours was. Many things to think about other than the colors of the cabinets.
Still, that grey stain finish still sat in my mind. Because of this, we decided to do all the lower cabinets in the grey stain. We would leave the upper cabinets painted white. It will be two-toned with dark lower cabinets and bright white uppers. The room would transition from dark to bright white, I said. That was the final plan.
Next comes the hardest part, and that is choosing what sort of cabinets you want. We all want more storage. Its like you can never have enough storage. If you are like me, its not hard to fill any empty cabinet in your home! But, now is your time to organize the functionality of your kitchen. Figure out where you want to store your pots and pans. Will you have space for all you need in one cabinet, or will you need two cabinets for cookware? What other things will you need to store. Will these things work best with a standard cabinet or drawer cabinet, or what about a standard cabinet with drawer inserts? And you thought picking colors was difficult!
We were lucky, our cabinet specialist helped us with our kitchen design as a free service, as we were ordering our cabinets with them. We used Wholesale Cabinet Supply and she worked one-on-one with us with every change we made. There were several. She was so patient. Here again, don’t settle. If you feel like you aren’t happy with your choices, revise them. This is your one chance to get it right. There are always going to be things you could have done differently. Regardless, you want to feel good about your decisions as this is the kitchen you will be using for a long time, or the rest of your life. No pressure, right?!
Coordinating Your Kitchen Materials
The biggest challenge is probably coordinating your kitchen materials to be made, delivered and received. There can be weeks of lead time when it comes to cabinets being constructed. You can save some time if you are assembling yourself. This can also save you a lot of money. We had too many existing projects we needed to finish to worry about assembling the cabinets too. We had our cabinets preassembled and ready for install.
One of your largest expenses can be your install. With all the challenges we faced installing the kitchen, this could be where you want to put your extra money. Michael has many years experience with leveling equipment, so we were fortunate he could take this on. Although, he may have regretted it a few times! Our floor, being a 1975 home, had a slightly slanted floor. One side of the kitchen needed much more leveling than the other to bring it all up. At this point, our hardwood floors had already been installed, intentionally. We had decided to run the floors wall to walll and put the kitchen on top of them. It felt more sturdy, although more costly on the floor expense. But not too bad.
We had an additional shipping obstacle, as we live on a gravel road. The kitchen cabinets are delivered in a large tractor trailer. He had to park at the top of the road and unload there, on the side of the main road. We used the truck and brought each piece, one-by-one down to the house. Can you imagine? It was actually a really fun day as we had several people help out. We also keep straps and things for work on hand so we had the ability to do this. It was quite the extravaganza!
One thing I can’t stress enough; If you have a deadline, you need to make sure you are placing your orders in time. Our countertops took a few weeks lead time to be cut and scheduled for install. The cabinets took several weeks as well. We did have a deadline, and luckily we were were able to meet it. Looking back now, I may be grateful we had that deadline. It pushed us to finally make decisions, get things ordered and get the ball rolling. If you don’t have a deadline, give yourself one. It can help you finalize all your materials so you can get them ordered.
Pulling it All Together
In the end, bringing all your material choices together to reach your desired style is your goal. In each category there are many options out there that will complete this. Finding what you love the best will pull your new kitchen together. We went with a two-toned cabinet style with dark floors. Stain grey lower cabinets and bright white upper white cabinets. We had a farmhouse sink we had found locally at a great price. Then, we added a modern stainless hood we left exposed over the stove on the counter to ceiling tiled wall. We decided to not hang any cabinets on this wall. Here we will install open wood shelving for more of the rustic finish and to display kitchen things.
Another thing to figure is the shape of your kitchen. Our kitchen is in a G-Shape as we wrapped it around the room with several turns. This style does present many corner challenges. Our sink has two corners, at different angles, as it faces out the back window with the pass-thru bar. At the end of the kitchen on the doorway side we placed a peninsula style seating counter with space for three stools.
Having these corners allowed us to have two lazy Susans in the room. There are many modern organizational ways to maximize your corner cabinets, if you order a blind cabinet instead of a lazy Susan. A lot of these inserts are pricey. So, if you are doing this with a standard corner cabinet know that the moving parts will cost you too. It may not be cheaper than a lazy Susan corner cabinet. The look of the installed mechanisms are pretty cool, though. I wanted the lazy Susan because I am a spice addict and love spinning it around to locate my spices. We store all of our small appliances in the second one.
It can be very cumbersome designing and building your own kitchen. Or, it can be the best experience you ever had. Ours was the best! We also payed for the counter installation, and have no regrets here. They brought a laser and this may be the most interesting thing I have ever seen. It cut every centimeter out to the tee. We had already put the tile up on the walls (long story), but it actually cut the back line for the countertop in tiny indentions to go against the grouted tile. Impressive! We had them cut out our bar top into a template while they were there. That was a life saver as it needed special angles. This was a local countertop supplier called Mainland Stoneworks. We were very happy with their quality and service, but especially the installation!
If you are still figuring out your kitchen design, know that eventually you will bring all your ideas to life! All the hard work it takes to find the right materials will pay off. For more info on the exact materials we choose, layout, and kitchen specifics see Kitchen Reveal Page (Coming Soon). We will be adding the appliances and hardware and all. (Go to Menu – Home Remodel – Kitchen Reveal)
To see products we love for the home and garden go to Rainy Day Deals on the welcome page. Here we have featured items, sales and current discounts!
Thank you for stopping by and reading. We hope this has helpful information. Feel free to leave a comment with any specific kitchen design questions, if we can answer it we will be glad to!
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