March is here, which is exciting for us as this is the month that we start our new kitchen! Matt demolished the lighthouse themed kitchen the weekend after we closed on the house. Since then, I have been preparing meals (trying to) in our temporary kitchen, which is also the room that we have caught five mice in over the last two months. Needless to say, we are both ready for a real kitchen. Matt is currently putting the finishing touches on the ceiling, then he has two weekends to install our new kitchen floor before the cabinets are installed. We are planning to install clear maple hardwood floors, to match our floors upstairs and also create a nice contrast with our concrete floors that surround the open kitchen.
Over the last couple of months we have been tweaking a floor plan that we started even before we closed on the house. The layout is planned around a couple key items: the bar wall that Matt built, which is centered under the main beam that runs the entire length of the house; and the appliances. We decided to keep the layout of the existing appliances as close to the same location as possible, to limit the amount of rewiring. Here is the layout we decided on:
We recently hired a carpenter out of Huntsburg, Ohio, to build our cabinets. We got four quotes for the cabinets, and to our surprise, having them custom built ended up being the most cost effective solution. Our kitchen requires so many custom dimensions and features, such as built in bookcases that face out into the living room and bar area. The cabinets will be made out of plywood, with solid maple doors, in a medium chestnut stain (to match the base of our new Noguchi table). We are going for a clean, modern style so the doors will be full overlay (no space in between them) in a flat panel style. We are also adding some interest by incorporating white doors on the pantry and cabinet over the refrigerator as well as white shelves in the open shelving unit that is next to the pantry. All along, I have really wanted to have white cabinets with glass doors, framed in aluminum, on the back window wall. As I started pricing these out, it became clear that these cabinets would add a major chunk of cash to the cabinet budget ($660 each from Home Depot). So, we decided to look at an IKEA cabinet for that area. Matt and I went on a road trip to the IKEA in Pittsburgh and we were pleasantly surprised to find my ideal glass door cabinet for a mere $92 each! Yes, please! We purchased two of the Akurum horizontal cabinets and Matt had the good idea of placing them side by side, extending on the wall into the bar area. This will help not only to give us more storage, but also to link the bar area to the kitchen, helping it to feel like one space.
We were pleasantly surprised to find out that Whirlpool makes well designed, and very affordable appliances for IKEA. We walked away with our oven and our dishwasher! We opted for an integrated dishwasher as out floor plan calls for the oven and dishwasher to be side by side. This would look busy so the dishwasher will receive a wood panel on the facade, to blend in with the base cabinets. We were pretty set on getting a the Framtid electric, slide-in range, but the Nutid oven, with its white, back-painted glass front, caught our eye. It was beautiful! I never thought I would feel this way about an oven, but I am in love. Thank you, Whirpool and IKEA. Although, we did not fall in love with their cooktops, so we are still on the hunt for a simple, white, glass-top cooktop. Any suggestions?
A great detail we are able to achieve by using the IKEA oven, is that we were able to purchase matching hardware for our cabinets. Now all of our door handles and drawer pulls will match the handle on the oven. Because of this, we decided to purchase a refrigerator that has no handles. We found this simple Samsung fridge at Best Buy:
We are planning on making our own concrete countertops for the kitchen. Matt has never done this before but has been reading a lot about it and has friend that has worked in the concrete industry and offered to help. I am crossing my fingers that they can pull this off as it will save us a lot of money. We decided to go with Corian in Glacier White for the bar top. There is a secret design detail about the bar top that I am not telling but you will see in our after pictures. I promise it is a good one so stay tuned!
The finishing touches will be the white subway tile backsplash and wire cable lighting over the bar. As I gaze into the bare room now, with no finished floor and unstained beams, it is hard to believe that this kitchen in my mind will actually be a reality in less than two months. Matt has a lot of work ahead of him and I have a lot of moral support (and orders) to give!
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