Our Kitchen Renovation: The Cabinets

Our Kitchen Renovation: The Cabinets

Alright, so we picked a layout! And the winner is …

Option 3!

I’m 95 to 98 percent sure that this is what we’re going with — the fridge on the right wall, between the pantry cabinets, the sink and dishwasher under the window, open shelving on the back wall, and the stove in the island. We’ve tried SO many different options, beyond the three that we showed you, and this is what works best as far as functionality, lifestyle and the ever-important budget.

One of the questions we’ve gotten is about the stove in the island. We decided to do this first of all because two of the houses I grew up in had stoves in the island and it was really great for our family. I loved being able to sit in a stool at the island and talk face-to-face with my mom while she cooked, and she could watch me do homework while she made dinner. Also, when we tested the layout with the stove on the back wall and paced it out in real life, the distance was actually too far from the sink/fridge/island, so it would have been awkward in real life. It’s so hard to see distances in the rendering. We’re also able to save some money by not having to tile a backsplash anywhere!

So now that we have the layout worked out, let’s talk about cabinets! We’re going to use Ikea cabinets. There’s a bunch of things we like about Ikea kitchens, including the price; the styles; the ability to design our kitchen ourselves at home using their online software (which Andy is somewhat obsessed with); that we can easily make changes/additions later if we want (like adding upper cabinets someday if we decide need them); and that it’s easy to create exactly what we need by picking and choosing from a million different combinations of cabinets, drawers, and organizational add-ons.

We’ve decided on Ikea’s Ringhult doors in a high-gloss white for a very modern look (seen above — and I didn’t even realize until right now how similar this layout is to ours!). We debated for MONTHS about whether we wanted to do an all-white kitchen with white cabinets and white counters, or if we wanted to do wood cabinets with white counters (remember these wood cabinets? Be still my heart!). White counters was something we’ve been set on from the get go. We looked into Semihandmade, which is a company that makes custom doors for Ikea kitchens in tons of finishes and woods at fairly reasonable prices (what a great idea, right?!). We ordered some samples and while they were really pretty and we LOVE the look of white and wood kitchens, it just didn’t work in our house. It was too much wood, and any finish we liked wouldn’t work with our reddish wood floors. I’m not 100% crazy about our wood floors anyway, but they’re definitely here to stay.

So shiny white cabinets it is, and we’re really excited about it! I’m excited by the challenge of making an all-white kitchen feel warm and homey and not clinical, which I’ll do by bringing in color with accessories, maybe even wallpaper (TBD!) and/or paint. I think it will end up being a really fun and vibrant space that we’ll love to hang out in.

What do you think of our choices so far?

This was a super wordy, not-enough-pictures blog post, but I’ll make up for it on Friday (hopefully) when I’ll show you some kitchen inspiration — because who doesn’t love looking at beautiful kitchens??? Well, probably some people, but that’s boring. Ha!