Kitchen Renovation: Before Photos & Inspiration

I am SO excited to share this post with y’all today. I’ll be chatting all about our kitchen renovation. Including why we decided to renovate to begin with, why we’re renovating during quarantine & a little sneak peek into my inspiration behind the new kitchen.

Why we’re renovating our kitchen:

We love our house so much y’all. It was built in 1938 and has so much charm. It’s homey & mostly functional with a few exceptions. Living in an older home, we were really fortunate that many updates were made before we moved in a year & a half ago, but one area that we always knew we wanted to eventually update was the kitchen space. The previous owners did a great job updating the look of the kitchen, we loved the countertops, the paint & the backsplash, but it was rather small & the cabinets were starting to show signs of wear.

In addition, there was a small room off the kitchen that we got almost zero use out of. It would give us the extra space we were missing, so we decided to knock down the adjoining wall to expand the kitchen. This would give us more space to entertain, better flow & much more prep space for cooking in general.

There is also a small pantry/mudroom off the kitchen we’re renovating as well– new cabinets, fresh paint, etc, so everything is up to date & functional in that area.

Why are we renovating during Covid quarantine?

This was unfortunately just a case of really, really bad timing. We signed our contract with the kitchen design company, paid for our appliances & 50% off our cabinets before everything hit the fan. We were stuck between a rock & a hard place, and with the manufacturing of the cabinets in motion we really didn’t have a choice. Thankfully construction has remained “essential” in Kentucky, which has allowed us to proceed with the necessary demo. With all that being said, we’re so grateful everything has moved smoothly. As I type this our cabinets are being installed! YAY! We’re still several weeks out from completion, but cabinets feel like such a big part of the reno that we’re crossing off the list!

Before Photos:

Let’s get on with the before photos, shall we?! Please excuse the mess, I shot these right as we were packing everything up before demo started. As you can see, it was such a cute space! We really liked the finishes. The small size of the space was our biggest issue, especially when there was space adjacent to the kitchen we never used.

Below was the small room beside our kitchen. The only thing we ever had in there was our wine rack/bar cart. It leads out to our screened in patio, which we use & love all the time. It also led into my office, but we closed that doorway up during the renovation for more usable wall space.

Inspiration:

Going into the kitchen design process I just assumed we were going to do another white kitchen. It’s what we’ve had the past two kitchen, and I really like the clean, bright look. As time went on, I kept gravitating towards a warmer greige color. The more I fell in love with this color, the more sterile & colder white cabinets felt.

Because of the age & character of the home, I also just felt like something warmer would mesh better with the rest of the home and adjoining rooms.

Other components of kitchens I was loving: gold hardwear, mixed metals, burlwood accents, waterfall islands & the contrast between greige cabinets & white countertops.

Inspo Board:

This has been so fun to put together! The cabinet colors, countertops, faucets, hardware & appliances are actual pieces we’re using & the rest is the fun part. The gals from Adelé {they are amazing, and helped us with our entryway & dining room!} are helping put the finishing design touches on the space, but I’ve had more fun putting this inspo board together. I keep tweaking it week after week, but these are some fabrics, lighting & stools I am loving so far!

Stay tuned for the after photos! xo!