The Stomach of the Home

I technically live in my whole entire house but, if we are being honest, I really live in the kitchen. This is the room I spend the most time in and was super focused on during the design. I love to eat (probably more than a 5’4 girl should), I love to entertain, and I love to COOK. I think that is how I got J to fall in love with me- I just kept shoving food down his throat before he could realize that there were other woman in the world (totally kidding- kinda). When we purchased our home, the kitchen was vomit-worthy. Even with the big windows, it was dark, moldy, and a poor use of space. Honestly surprised I didn’t find rats in the cabinets, but the insect life was top notch.

A photo of the kitchen when we first bought the house

The first step toward fixing this room was to rip everything apart. Literally nothing could stay. Get it out. Burn it. So, so gross.

Once we had a clean slate, it was easier to understand what we were working with. This place is like a fun house- every room is oddly shaped and we had to be creative with how to style and furnish it. The kitchen was no exception. While it is a decent sized room, it was not big enough for what we had really wanted. I had hoped to have a massive kitchen island with bar stools that overlooked the living room and a big walk in pantry. I also would like to be a millionaire but we don’t always get what we want and life goes on, naw mean??

To start, we needed to figure out flooring. We were going to have the same flooring throughout the entire main floor, so once we had laid and stained the woods floors, we worked with J’s dad on cabinet design. The goal was to maximize space and storage without overcrowding the room. For a hot minute, it was a big question mark as to whether or not we would be able to fit an island at all. After some pleading and staring at floor plans forever, we got that sucker in there!

Fun fact, during construction our house looked like an actual trash can with all of the beverages and boxes strewn about.

Once we had the general layout of our cabinets and appliances figured out, we needed to start deciding on colors, counters, lighting, etc. I was very in between dark wood vs light. I love the look of dark wood with a thick, cream granite, but didn’t think that would be the best route for this house. I felt that the dark wood might make the room seem smaller, so opted to go for white cabinets with a dark wood island. That way we could have a little bit of each while still brightening up the room. Josh and his dad did all of the molding and we found awesome lantern lighting at Home Depot that added to the dark accents I was looking for.

The final thing on our todo list was to figure out the appliances and the countertops. I wanted to stick with the concept of having something light and adding in dark accents to add more dimension to the room. We found an awesome, matte marble countertop that seemed to be the perfect finishing touch. Good thing we ended up liking it because it was used as our backsplash as well.

For our appliances, I was not too picky. In regards to the dishwasher, I wanted it to be stainless steel and to clean my stuff and not break. That would be enough to thrill me. I would realize months later that what would really thrill me would be for my fiancé to actually put dishes IN the dishwasher as opposed to placing them on the counter above it. Patience is a virtue, right???

For the stove, I wanted 6 burners as it is not unusual for me to have 90 things cooking at once and to need more than 4. I wanted a hood for function but also because it also looks quite badass in my opinion. For the fridge, I wanted it to be stainless, dispense water, and to have a pull out freezer drawer. J’s dad nailed it and even found a fridge that dispenses hot water. I’ve only used it a whole 4 times but the concept is cool so we are going to talk about it!

J’s dad had the great idea of putting the microwave in the island as opposed to on the wall to give us more cabinet space. He also added pull out drawers in the island for additional storage, which was the icing on the cake.

I feel like we were able to add a crazy amount of storage into the space while still keeping it airy and uncrowded. J’s dad added a few features that I would not have thought of that are AMAZING:

He created a drawer next to our stove specifically designed to hold spices in an organized fashion. At J’s condo, they were all shoved in a shelf not meant for short people. I could never see what we had and always ended up buying duplicates. I now have no excuse for buying duplicates, I just panic buy spices, apparently.

This drawer was created to hold knives. Most knives come in a block that goes on the counter- while those are cute and convenient, I don’t love having a ton of stuff on my counters, so this gives us the option to put them somewhere else. Someday, when I actually own knives, this will be really sick.

The PANTRY. We obviously didn’t have room for a walk in so we needed another way to maximize space. I wanted to have pull out cabinets because I felt that food would otherwise get shoved to the back and wouldn’t be seen again until it was 3 years expired. And don’t you dare judge my instant potatoes- quarantine shopping does dirty things to a woman.

The lazy Susan is the coolest thing ever invented, hands down. J had one at the condo and it is another way to ensure food doesn’t just get shoved to it’s death in the back of the cabinet. We have one of these at each corner of the kitchen. The one not pictured may or may not be strictly dedicated to alcohol but let’s focus on the baking one instead that makes me look like a put together person.

Corner cabinets are the devil…usually. This space was maximized by adding hinges to the door so that we could have one big cabinet as opposed to two small ones.

So that’s it, the room that has my heart! The kitchen island has become the social spot for when guests are over and we have already created so many memories in this room in the one year that we have lived here. It overlooks our deck, so we open up the windows when we have people over and are able to connect outside and inside together. One of the best glow ups of 2019 for sure!