My Kitchen Design, Six Years Later: What I Love & What I Would do Differently

It’s crazy to think we remolded our kitchen six years ago, our kitchen renovation story is a little different than most, for new people to my blog, here’s a brief background story on our home. Seven years ago, we were giving our kitchen a makeover, working with what we had making budget-friendly improvements. We tore out the old date tile counters and back splash and installed new counters, removed some cabinets to install a wall mount Range Hood above our stove. I was so proud of how everything was coming together, and then a few weeks later, the home next door to ours caught fire, and then caught our house on fire. It was devastating, we lost over 97% of our belongings, our home had to be gutted done to the studs, and we spent a year living in an apartment while re-building our home. It was one of the hardest years of my life, read more about it here.

The light at the end of the tunnel after dealing with the insurance company, mortgage company, contractors, was seeing our home being re-built and making thoughtful improvements along the way. Read more about the Kitchen Design here.

Over the weekend, I gave my kitchen a good cleaning, including cleaning out the interior of the cabinets! That was a huge chore, I checked dates and toss all the old crap, plus updated our spice containers to ones that fit better in our cabinets. Kitchens feel better when clean!

Since it has been six years since I designed my kitchen, I thought it would be fun to share what I still love and share what changes I would make if designing my kitchen today. Below is my kitchen, don’t peonies my it prettier? Oh, I also gave the grout behind my stove a little refresh, with the help of this Grout Pen it comes in a two pack! I have a few more areas to touch up in my kitchen and then time to tackle a few areas in my bathroom, trust me if you have white grout you need this!

My Kitchen Design, Six Years Later: What I Love & What I Would do Differently

Below are my thoughts on my kitchen design, highlighting the major components of my kitchen.

LAYOUT DESIGN: We have a small kitchen, only nine feet wide. I’m so happy I changed the layout from L Shape kitchen with a floating fridge to a U Shape Kitchen Layout. The U Shape Layout of the kitchen creates a nice ‘working triangle’ and fully utilizes the floor plan our spaces and maximizes it. I love how the refrigerator area of our kitchen is built, fully incorporating it into the design. Most often fridges look like after thoughts and just randomly attached to the wall.

So yes, I would still go with the U Shape Design!

WHITE CABINETS: I love my all white kitchen, BUT there have been plenty of moments over the years when I’m over washing them to stay clean. For the size and layout of my kitchen and lighting, I prefer white cabinets, both lower and upper. In my next kitchen, when and if we ever move I can see myself playing with the idea of going with darker cabinets of the bottom and white upper cabinets. This two-tone kitchen below makes me smile.

image via Grant K Gibson

CABINET STYLE & STORAGE: Personally, I love classic shaker cabinets, depending on the other elements in a kitchen they can go country, boho (when paint a fun color) or modern. I love these style cabinets so much, I made turned our basic ‘flat front’ cabinets in our master bathroom into shaker style cabinets (see here) One thing we should have splurged for was a Lazy Susan in our lower corner cabinets (on either sides of the stove) pulling out pots and pans and other dinnerware is such a chore, and its so hard to see what’s down there. In my next kitchen Lazy Susans will be a must!

OPEN SHELVES: that it breaks up all the cabinets and creates a special moment in my kitchen for display storage: for bowls, cookbooks, cookie jars, etc. I can't see myself forging all upper cabinets, ‘I like things out of sight’ such as spices tucked away in the cabinet, or cereal boxes hidden. We don’t have a separate pantry in our kitchen, having upper cabinets keeps clutter on my counters at bay. I realized over the weekend in my next kitchen; I still don't want a pantry! Instead, I would love a Butler’s Pantry to hold all my entertaining items: platters, cake stands, bowls or all sizes, plus a small built-in wine fridge! A girl can dream right!

KITCHEN FLOORING: Hardwood floors in a kitchen can be controversial, some people our on camp tile or wood. Give the small layout of our home and our eat-in dining room, keeping the flooring our living areas all hardwoods was a must! I know people say, only tile is practical in kitchens, but let’s be honest is you spill water you still have to wipe it up, if something leaks, you’ll have to replace it even tile. Knock on wood, that doesn’t happen regardless of the flooring material you choose.

BACK SPLASH: In our kitchen, I went with classic subway tile, I love its timeless look at affordable price point, now would I do subway tile again? YES, its affordable and easy to care for. Marble back splashes are so pretty, but they also stress me out. ! I might not do just white tile and instead opt for color tile or a crackle glaze subway tile to mix it up, I also love the idea of a little niche shelf above the stove, like below its so cute!

image via Traditional Home

APPLIANCES: The next time we purchase all new appliances for our home, I doing a crazy of amount of research and reading all the reviews! We replaced our dishwasher two years ago, after repairing our dishwasher a few times and for the past year we’ve been dealing with bottom freezer drama. The bottom drawer is very hard to open and hard to close! We’re going to have a repaid company checkout the issue and decided if we want to repair or replace. Ugh the annoying part of home ownership! Lesson learned do the homework and take your time when selecting appliances, I personally feel like they should last at least 10 years below replacing. We do however LOVE our built-in range and I would be buy it over and over! It’s amazing and a workhorse and so pretty!! Our range is Frigidaire Gallery, with convection oven and all the fun features.

If you were designing your kitchen today, what changes would you make?

I learned to do the research when it comes to selecting appliances, that timeless kitchen vibes appeal to me long-term and that splurge on interior organizers, like Lazy Susans in small kitchens, its worth it!

Master Bedroom Update: Cushy New Rug

With our closet officially organized and done, check out the blog post here. I really want to give my bedroom some attention, its seriously in need of an identity, style, color, artwork, cozy spot to read. You get the picture. I even created a design plan a few years go, I’m still happy with the design plan and likely will make few tweaks to it.

One of the happiest additions in my bedroom, is our new rug! Luckily it arrived right before my recent trip with Hasani to London & Dublin, so I could roll it out and see how it looked in our bedroom. It looked incredible! The tones in the rug hit all the colors I love greys + shades of blue. And it’s so soft, the rug replaces a dhurie rug we had that I never truly loved but made it work. The dhurie rug from jump wasn’t a fit. As they say out with the old rug and in with the new rug!

I bought the rug Edessa Tribal from Rugs USA during a 40% off sale, I’m in love with the rug and love the affordable price point.

I love how a simple rug update, can put a huge smile on your face and help give your bedroom a fresher feel. While there’s still a lot of updates that need to happen in my bedroom, I’m happy I finally have some pattern and color in here! One of the things I did, after rolling out our new bedroom rug, was getting rid of all the boxes and dust collectors under our bed, its a small change - but makes our bed look so much cleaner with its made, no more junk peaking out from underneath.

Next on my bedroom project list is hemming my drapes in my bedroom. What do you think of my new bedroom rug? What’s a project around your home that’s taken forever to execute?