Open house: my updated kitchen

It's been a long time since I've shared a peek inside my home, hasn't it? But today I'm excited to invite you into one of my favorite spaces in this house: my new kitchen!

To give a feel for how much this kitchen has changed over the years, here's a look back.

Kitchen in 2010:

The cupboards are wonderful quality, but the kitchen feels like a sea of brown. So here it is in 2014:

I was very happy with these updates, especially the transformation of the island. But over time, the cabinets sustained some water damage, like this:

I knew that this damage had to be repaired, but it took me a long time to decide what to do.

Finally I consulted two friends: one who has remodeled four kitchens for herself and one who is a top-notch local realtor. Both of them advised having the cabinets painted.

To be honest, our granite countertops are not my favorite. I love the sleek, clean look of marble or quartz. But the countertops are in great shape, and the same granite is still being used in kitchen construction. "Your granite is fine," pronounced my realtor friend. And my friend with kitchen remodeling experience suggested that I start with painting the cupboards and just see how I felt once that was done. "You might find that the painted cabinets give you a whole new kitchen," she advised. She was right!

Everything feels so much lighter and brighter now!

Besides painting the cupboards, I made a few other changes as well—some complicated, some simple. Perhaps the most complicated was having the range hood altered. Here's how the old hood looked:

It was a custom-made hood, but I didn't really like the trim work, and the edges were so sharp! (Just ask my husband and two of my sons, all of whom are over 6'6" tall.) With some carpentry and painting magic, here's the hood now:

I considered replacing the range hood with a stainless steel one, but the cost was crazy expensive, in my opinion. So I looked for inspiration online, and found a hood I liked at Home Stories A to Z (Beth's kitchen is simply gorgeous!).

Another big change was the lighting in the room. I swapped out the three small lights over the island for two large lanterns:

I also changed the chandelier over the table:

The other changes were smaller. I swapped out the drawer pulls, but re-used the knobs, sticking with oil-rubbed bronze because it works well with the granite.

I wanted to add some blue to the room to work well with the blue in the adjacent dining room, so I got a new rug:

painted a terra cotta pot navy blue and gold:

and added a small lamp to the serving area.

I also wanted to add some blue to the window treatment. I still love my DIY Roman shade (full tutorial here), so I just painted over some of the green stripes with blue paint. Presto!

Here's a look behind the scenes of the cabinet painting process:

After removing all the cabinet doors and drawers to be taken to the shop, the painters taped off and tented the area. They removed the old finish, sprayed on a primer, then patched every visible imperfection.

Then they sprayed on two coats of the white paint I chose ("Alabaster" from General Finishes).

After seeing these guys work, I was filled with admiration for people who paint their cabinets themselves! 

All in all, I'm very pleased with our updated space. It's so clean, light, and bright. I'm glad I took my friends' advice. I do feel like I have a whole new kitchen!

Sources (no affiliation):

Island lanterns: Birch Lane Heritage, Wayfair

Chandelier: Laurel Foundry Carmen, Wayfair

Cabinet pulls: Emtek Westwood, build.com

Rug: Mistana Hillsby, Wayfair

What do you think?

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