The Reno Report - The After Kitchen

I am very excited to finally share these before and after pictures of our home kitchen. to help give this some perspective here are a couple of reminder photos of what this space looked liked when we first saw it and then purchased the home. it's a galley style kitchen, so it's long and narrow. our main goal was to brighten the space and add a little bit of a modern facelift without sinking a ton of money into it. click here to view our inspiration board from this old post. some of the cabinet space didn't justify being there, so after we moved in we spent a couple months planning how we needed the space to function and where we needed things to be. this gave us a focus on what needed to be included, removed and how to make it all a little more friendly and multifunctional.  

again much like the rest of the house, as new home owners we really want to work with what we have for a few years. we started by pulling off the old cabinet doors and hiding those old wooden handles and exposed trim along the ceiling and floors with fresh white paint. following that we freshened  them up even more by adding sleek stainless steel pulls. with the help of our family we painted the walls a nice soft buttery yellow and cleaned up the window and baseboard trim with more of that clean white paint. we then removed the old dusty metal blind from the window over the kitchen sink and added white linen french bistro style curtains. we love natural night, so aside from the one window  we decided to leave the bay window bare. it's heaven. a few months ago we were also fortunate enough to source a really great dishwasher on a major sale and scooped it up fast so we could retire the off-white  old one (it sadly had rust inside it causing spots on all the dishes).
 

what you now see as our morning coffee bar used to be a very narrow worn out broom closet. since that cabinet literally could only fit a broom and held the light switch for the room, we agreed to  rip it out and replaced it with the all white and wood top butcher block on wheels that we sourced from the Cuisinart line at Canadian Tire. i'm still impressed at how well it blends in the space. we added two stainless steel shelves above for our coffee cup display. this is easily my favourite spot in the kitchen. it added a great focal point to the room and an unique way to add some storage space.

 

 

as you can see we also had a section of unused space in the corner beside the bay window seat. here we placed a smaller waist height cabinet (also butcher block style and on wheels) that came from Canadian Tire. we then custom fit shelving above for additional small item storage. this help us to maximize every corner we could for storage space in the kitchen, freeing up counters. helpful hint - if you find you don't have enough storage, the best thing to do is look up. add a shelf over doors ways for cook books or, platters. adding height can also make the room feel taller and more spacious. 

we kept the old seafoam glass table from my old apartment and fitted the bay window with some pillows for seating. i love waking up late on weekend mornings and sitting there with a warm coffee, good book, looking out over the ravine behind us. 

we feel inspired cooking and creating in this space. it's comfortable when we have parties, and we love entertaining. it feels refreshed and bright and clean and that's what we love the very most.

What we used!

• Paint - Benjamin Moore, Dijon
• Trim Paint - Benjamin Moore, Cloud White
• Cabinet Pulls - Home Depot, Satin Nickel
• Linen Curtains - Handmade
• Magnetic Knife Rack - Ikea, Gruntal
• Table - Craigslist
• Chairs - Ikea, Ingolf
• Cabinet Butcher Blocks on Wheels - Canadian Tire, Cuisinart
• Hanging Planter - Etsy, Monique Cote