next steps in the kitchen

so, all of the things we are doing in the kitchen right now are kind of a mini makeover to hold us over until hopefully someday we can reconfigure the kitchen altogether and re-do the cabinets, install an island and make better use of some of the under utilized, non-functional space.  i will go into that in a bit, but for now we just wanted the place to not look like a 90 year old woman decorated it.

of course the first thing was to remove the wall paper accent wall that was a peachy-flesh tone pinstripe, and the outdated wall paper border, and then paint the walls to cover the ridiculous green paint.  then the cabinets.  then the appliances.  it all takes time since we are saving up and then working on the next update, and we are doing most things ourselves.  but i am not afraid of working hard, and it feels good to be able to make such a drastic change in a space that i spend so much of my time in.

the next items on the list are to tile the backsplash.  i think i finally settled on marble subway tile.  i love these looks:

i basically just want my whole kitchen to look like this

so some of the features you might have noticed are that the tile goes to the ceiling in places, and wraps around the window.  my plan is to have the backsplash go from the edge of the wall where the kitchen/family room door is, continue behind the range, all along the under cabinet area, wrap completely around the window, and continue to the edge of the wall that meets where the sliding glass door is.  it's not a huge amount of space as far as square footage goes, but it will make a big impact.  of course my favorite diy bloggers at young house love have a marble subway tile backsplash in their kitchen and they chose a tumbled marble, which i love love love.  it's more matte and not as shiny as regular marble.  i haven't been able to find a tumbled marble around here though, so we'll see.  i still have to check The Tile Shop near us.  but anyway, i love the look of subway tile, and i think the marble kicks it up a notch and fancies it up a bit.  also, it will coordinate nicely with the gray paint on the cabinets, and the soft blue we have on the walls.  

then, we will replace the hideous vinyl flooring.  it's yellowing, it has a pebbled surface so it holds onto dirt and never looks clean, and the pattern...just, no.  it's not as bad as the previous vinyl flooring, thank goodness.  but i am over the 1992 style decor in the kitchen.  hubs and i talked about if we wanted to do a different vinyl, tile, or hardwood.  and if we did hardwood, what kind would we do? we currently have engineered hardwood acacia in most of the downstairs.  since we have that wood, and then we have tile in the powder room, and vinyl tiles in the laundry room and carpet in the family room, i didn't want to add another differing floor in the kitchen.  i don't want there to be too many transitions.  and i'm ok with the laundry room being different because that door is hardly ever open and no one else goes in there besides us.  but, the hallway, kitchen and family room are all in this triangle of contiguity if you will.  so i don't want so many different types of flooring in one place.  make sense?  i just want everything to look pretty continuous.  so we decided to just do engineered hardwood in the same color that is already in the downstairs.  it's not my first choice, the color has too much red for me.  i would have chosen a worn, gray-brown look, but we are certainly not going to replace all the wood floors downstairs.  at least not until they need to be replaced.  i hope that the wood flooring won't reflect too much onto the cabinets and wall paint and add a reddish hue.  hmmmm.  we will have to perhaps purchase a few planks and do a test run.  

this picture has nothing to do with the kitchen post, but it is part of the hallway to the kitchen and you can see the color and details of the engineered hardwood flooring.  

and then the next project to tackle is the crown molding and the trim around the cabinets.  i wrote a post about that here, but basically i want to trim out around the cabinets, on top of the cabinets where the cabinet boxes meet the soffit, and of course add crown molding around the entire kitchen.  here are some visual inspiration pics:

can you see the gap between where the cabinet box and wall meet?  i want to add quarter round there, some sort of trim on the bottom of the cabinet box and some more trim on the top there where the cabinet box meets the soffit.

see where the top of the cabinet box is?  there will be some quarter round added there, and then some trim at the bottom of the actual soffit, and crown molding at the top, and then i will paint the entire soffit and trim white to match the cabinets, so it all looks like one piece, like the pictures below

and then i'll be adding trim to the peninsula like the picture above.  this is that kitchen again that i basically want my kitchen to look like.

so that's it for the projects for the kitchen for now.  i have written about this before, but there are some changes i want to make at some point:

-see this area below?  this is on the other side of the peninsula, i imagine it's supposed to be a nook like area.  but we rarely use this area.  the kids' table is kind of in that area, and they use it everyday, but the only things we use this kitchen table for is when the kids paint or do crafts.  this area is really under-utilized and not really functional at all.  so i'd like to make it useful.  the tricky thing is that the sliding glass door is on one of these walls.  i have been throwing around a few ideas for this area.  first, it may be cool to make a built-in kitchen nook area.

this is the area that i want to change.  so much un-used space and so much potential.

see the sliding glass door?  i actually really love it but that only leaves a few feet of depth for a counter or cabinets up top, etc.  it could still work though.

the corner where we could build in a banquette kind of thing 

this type of area is similar, so we could potentially have part of the bench/sitting area in front of one half of the sliding glass door

i love this.  maybe something like this can be over in the corner

corner bench area, maybe something like this will work, if you are looking at our space, it would be on the right hand corner

something like this is great because it has this built in bench area and is surrounded by built in storage.  this is what i was envisioning at first, but i'm just not sue how it would work given the sliding glass door.  like, i don't know if the wall perpendicular to the sliding glass door is deep enough to allow for cabinets like this

something like this would also be awesome, like a mudroom area.  i just am not sure if it would be the best use of space for that area

ok so then my other thought was that maybe we could build in a counter along that back wall with either glass front cabinets or open shelving.  this would provide lots of storage and work space (i could move my baking stuff over there):

something like this but all along that back wall

this is another option, more of what i was thinking, a long counter with cabinets (or drawers!) on the bottom and open shelving on the top

and then i also want to update this area.  this was a kitchen desk at some point i assume.  we turned it into our coffee area.  yes, we need an entire area for coffee.  but, because this is a kitchen desk, it's not counter height.  and the drawers on the left pretty much don't serve much function.  and the area underneath the desk isn't used very efficiently either.  my other issue is that it's completely off center from the cabinets above it.  so what i'd like to do is tear that desk out completely and add a counter with drawers underneath it.  that could be a great area for my baking stuff, and our coffee bar.  and above can either be open shelving, or some glass front cabinets, and the drawers underneath would be able to store all the baking stuff and all the stuff we have in the cabinets above.  

something like this, but obviously something that is the proper length

i also like the idea of putting a microwave storage area there to remove it from above the range

 i think we can actually update that space pretty easily by purchasing some cabinet boxes at lowe's, installing it and painting, adding trim, etc, and then having a counter installed.  i think it would be sooooo great in that spot.

but i also have to weigh all those options against a total kitchen reno.  those options would be like mini-makeover/in between changes until we could do a full kitchen reno.  but, of course i wouldn't want to put too much money and time into doing a lot of updates to the kitchen that we would eventually just rip out if we did a full renovation.  but then i think, how long is it going to be before we can actually afford a full kitchen renovation?  with a roof to replace, it's probably not going to be soon.  so those are things to consider.  what's actually realistic.

in a full kitchen renovation i would want to open up that wall (where the kids' table is) to the dining room, kind of like this:

 and then i would want to remove the peninsula, and expand the kitchen to fill that space at the back where the sliding glass door is, and add a huge island in the middle.  also, finding a better location for the fridge, and adding some open shelving, and a space for the garbage and recycle that is not under our sink.  and then a whole lot of other things like a new huge sink and faucet, maybe some more windows.

take out the peninsula and add a huge island!

sooooomedaaaaaayyyyyy!