Our kitchen remodel is finished, and it's time for the big reveal!
We removed the wall between our dining room and kitchen.
And added an eating bar.
Our new leather bar stools are on back order until who-knows-when, so I parked my little craft studio stool here to give you the idea. Our contractor, Trent, and master finish carpenter, Luke, did amazing work designing and duplicating the old dining room wainscot and trim on the new bar.
The top of the bar wraps around the dining room wall to seat three and gives me a niche to decorate. I love niches!
The hutch that was on the dining room wall we removed is now in the kitchen. The entire kitchen remodel was centered on moving this hutch to this wall. To give you an idea of the scale of this cabinet, we need a ladder to reach the upper shelves. Not a step ladder, a real ladder. It's enormous!
The doors were stripped, repainted and rehung with the original hardware. This cabinet is our favorite part of the new kitchen, and we're so glad we can still see it from the front rooms of the house. We feel like we've preserved a big part of the history of our home.
I don't really have a decorating style. I like a little bit French, a little bit farmhouse, and a little bit vintage. If I like something, I just try and make it work.
Our bar is forty-two inches tall to hide kitchen clutter from the dining room. We've never had a kitchen bar before, and we love it.
First and foremost, our kitchen is a working kitchen. It's all about cooking big family dinners and easy cleanup afterwards. The criteria for every surface we chose was whether it would stand up to hard kitchen use, was it super easy to maintain, was it waterproof, and did it look like something you might see in a cottage one hundred years ago.
We chose Mannington Serengeti Slate for a floor that will last another one hundred years. Franklin Building Supply did a great installation over our uneven wonky old sub-floors.
The cottage two doors down from ours still has the original kitchen with a wood back splash and wood counters, so along with a slate floor we knew this look would be authentic to our old kitchen.
Our cast iron sink is the Wheatland from Kohler.
Our faucet is the Waterhill from Moen.
Our counters are new green certified Old Mill Oak HD laminate from Wilsonart. Surprised? I was!
Our new curtains were sewn from one 84-inch curtain panel purchased at Target.
Our coffee station fits perfectly behind this little dining room wall with coffee cups in the new small wall cabinet above.
Three people can now work comfortably in our little kitchen at the same time; two on either side of the sink, and another over here by the stove.
We switched out our old office-style whiteboard for my big homemade chalkboard for writing shopping lists and notes next to the pantry.
A new custom drawer cabinet replaced the upper cabinet space when the wall between the dining room and kitchen was removed. Our kitchen is tiny, but we have lots of storage. We spray painted all the old hardware oil rubbed bronze, and it's wearing just fine.
We love our kitchen's new bigger work spaces, the bar, the new cabinets, and all the updated surfaces.
But the main purpose of our remodel was to open the kitchen up to the dining and living rooms so we can spend more time together as a family.
My brother was here from California for Thanksgiving and sat at the new bar and visited with me while I cooked dinner during the day. Later, we lit the candles and dimmed all the lights to a soft glow and had our traditional formal dinner in the dining room. It was perfect.
We brought in a few front porch chairs to help us get a feel for the scale of the new furniture we'd like to buy. My new favorite place to sit and read is over in this corner by the front window where I can see the whole house now. My domain!
Our vision was for having a modern day open kitchen and living arrangement that works with our contemporary style of living, while still maintaining the historic integrity of our one hundred year-old cottage.
