Kitchen Remodel (Photo Heavy)

Welcome back!

This post is all about our kitchen remodel! We are currently 90% of the way complete, with just grouting our backsplash, applying wainscoting to the peninsula, and purchasing a new microwave left to go. But first, a reminder of where we came from…

If you remember, first we ripped out the old pantry and put in the door to the new butler’s pantry. We also widened the doorway into the dining room to a large cased opening. Minor drywall repairs were necessary over the old pantry location because the ceiling drywall within the pantry was not continuous with the drywall in the kitchen.

Next we went over to our local Lowe’s, and sat down with our designer Larry, who helped us with the pantry design and install. He helped us put together a new floorplan for our kitchen. Unfortunately, the kitchen was really too narrow to have an island, but was a little wide to be a true galley style kitchen. We compromised with a large peninsula. While I hated to lose our small prep sink in the island, the layout works much better.

Once our design was complete, we ordered our cabinets and began gutting the kitchen. We used the same cabinet style as the pantry, Kraftmaid’s Montclair in Cherry Peppercorn. 

Taking down the cabinets and replacing the old damaged drywall, as well as ripping out the tile and laminate floors:

After all the cabinets were removed, the island was removed and water sources capped off. The old drywall was replaced and repainted, and the outlets were replaced to meet code. We also built out the peninsula base.

There was so much dust from grinding down the mastic from the old tile! We also had to reroute the water for the sink since it is now in the peninsula. Thankfully Jordan was able to do the electrical and plumbing work, including soldering the copper pipe for the new sink.

We were ready for our cabinet install! We did have Lowe’s do a professional cabinet install for us. The cabinets and the granite countertops were the only parts that we did not do ourselves.

I had a really hard time deciding on a sink for the kitchen. I was in love with the nickel-plated hammered copper sinks all over Pinterest, like this one and this one… but the more reviews I read the more I was worried about the nickel-plating scratching off and tarnishing, or becoming otherwise damaged. Copper is also very soft, so I worried about how it would stand up to the heavy use it would get. Then I found this amazing hammered stainless steel farmhouse sink from Linkasink, which had the look I wanted but with the durability of stainless steel. Photo shown below is the polished finish, we went with the satin/brushed finish.

For our granite countertops, we chose the same granite that we had previously used in the butler’s pantry. We ordered our countertops through Lowe’s, but did not use their supplier and instead went to Arizona Tile. They had much higher quality granite than the initial place Lowe’s sent us. The granite we chose is called Delicatus ice (in some places listed as Delicatus white, although technically these are different).

Again, we had a professional install done, care of Lowe’s contractors.

Jordan picked out the faucet for our sink, which we were able to score a deal on through Amazon returns. He chose this gorgeous one from Koehler, in polished nickel.

You may recall that I mentioned us tearing out our flooring. Once the cabinets were installed we were ready to have our flooring done. We did the prep ourselves, but we did have the install done professionally. The tile we chose was a ceramic wood-look tile from DFW Flooring Warehouse.

From there we are on to the backsplash and fireback installation. We purchased our backsplash tile from The Tile Shop. We went with a tumbled white carrara marble subway tile. The exact tile is not viewable on line, but is available in the stores.

We also installed our antique fireback over the stove. I discovered this idea on Pinterest, and then spent a long time searching for an antique fireback (as opposed to a new one). The one we ended up with came from Charles Niejman. It was reclaimed from a French farmhouse and is late 1800s/early 1900s, according to the seller. We scrubbed it down to remove the rust, and then spray painted it matte black with heat resistant black spray paint to seal it and prevent further rusting.

And that’s where we’re at for now! Grouting should be finished within a few days, and then we just need to caulk, finish the trim on the exposed drywall corners and wainscoting, and purchase our new microwave, and the kitchen will be finished!

If you have any questions about our kitchen remodel feel free to leave them below in the comments!