My Kitchen 10 Years On, Before & After

Ten years ago I walked into half a dozen kitchen cabinet showrooms clutching in my hand a photocopy of a kitchen that I had seen in a magazine.  Yes, just one picture of one wall in a kitchen.  This was way before Pinterest and way before people started posting pretty pictures on blogs or the Internet.  I didn't have a bunch of pictures from magazines because when I saw this kitchen I just knew that was what I wanted.  Plus, 10 years ago all that seemed to be in magazines were pictures of knotty alder kitchens!  Remember those were all the rage back then, now not so much.

Here's the picture.  Sorry I don't have a source but if it's your kitchen, well done!

I loved how vintage it looked, but also updated.  I have a butler's pantry that has vintage cabinets like these, and I knew that I wanted the kitchen to replicate that.

It was super hard finding a company that would do these painted inset cabinets.  Even though I had a picture and said this is what I want, the companies still tried to talk me out of it!  They kept showing me regular or overlay cabinets made from, yep, knotty alder!?!  I was beyond frustrated.  Now, you can't go to any blogs or Pinterest without tripping over all of these glorious white kitchens.  I like to think I was ahead of the curve ;)

Let me show you my kitchen before, brace yourselves!

Kitchen before, just in case you get confused.

dining room/kitchen before

dining room/kitchen before

Aghh, what a sh*t hole!  Pardon my French.  Can you believe I painted those cabinets like that.  What was I thinking?  It was of course the days of Trading Spaces where anything faux was in, but still, that is not a good excuse.  It does look a little weird though, because we did have a wall separating that kitchen from the dining room that had been knocked through 6 months prior, hence the stove and cabinet against that side wall.  When we renovated the upstairs we knew that someday we would enlarge the kitchen so the contractors knocked the wall down in preparation.

And here's how the kitchen looks now from the same angles.

kitchen after

In the picture above you can see the butler's pantry with the original cabinetry.  We had glass doors made and changed the drawer pulls.

We completely reoriented the kitchen.  Where the table is now used to be the fridge, sink and cabinets.

Loads of photos of my new table cloth from Anthropologie, because I love it and it's so springlike and fresh.

I was playing dress-up with the table, but that's as far as I got because I couldn't be bothered to find 8 glasses that matched or wash-up the silverware!

That's the view looking through the family room to the library/music room.

Below is the view from the same angle as the 2nd and 3rd before photos.

 

We slotted the fridge into a window opening that had been covered up by a shed addition on the back.

Since we remodeled the kitchen 10 years ago, I have made a number of changes and still have a few that I want to do.

I changed out the light fixture over the dining table.  The one I originally chose was much smaller and didn't have the visual impact that I wanted.

kitchen with smaller light fixture

I replaced it with the jadeite Martha Stewart Veneto chandelier that I managed to find on clearance.  I originally wanted it in white, but it was all sold out.  I also wanted it with 5 arms, but they only had the 8 arm one, so I decided to take some of the arms off, if that makes sense.  I also contemplated spray painting it white, but I'm frightened the glass will look dull.

I decided to change out the green bench which was a pain for the children to climb in and out of.  That's my next project.  I'm planning on building a tufted corner banquette, wish me luck!

Another update we did was install some pendant lights over the island.

Kitchen before pendants 

kitchen after with pendants and painted island

This before picture above also shows what the kitchen looked like before we painted it white; before the island was painted grey; and before the floor was refinished with a darker stain.

Here's the inspiration photo for the island.

Other changes we have made recently include staining the floors darker and painting the walls white.  It looks so much fresher to me, but it does make the cabinets look more yellow of course.  The cabinets are getting pretty chipped and worn so I can see a new paint job somewhere down the line.  I'd choose a more white color for the cabinets then.

kitchen before with yellow walls and unstained hardwood

kitchen after with white walls and stained hardwood

I also painted the large yellow dresser white and painted the back the same green as the chandelier.

I'm a bit on the fence about the green colour.  I had originally planned to paint it the same grey colour as the island.  I think it might look a little too country.  But as I was pinning kitchen photos yesterday I stumbled upon this.

It's my dresser doppelganger!  That's so funny.  I did have an ongoing debate in my mind about painting the shelves white or green.  I like the look of them all green now after seeing this.  Look it even has the tins with names on them.  I wonder if theirs are empty also?

Another change that I want to make that won't break the bank is add subway tile.  Of course this will be a DIY job by me and that is why it hasn't happened so far.  We already have a 4 inch backsplash that will be staying, so it may look a little odd, but I think now most kitchens have a tiled backsplash, so it looks odd right now anyway.

So here's what I think my kitchen would look like with subway tile.  Similar, right?

We probably won't be staying in this house for much longer so I'm not going to be making any huge changes/investments.  But if I was to design this kitchen now, ten years later, I would most definitely have some fabulous Carrara or other type of fabulous marble countertops and backsplash.  I would probably have brass or gold accents (so trendy I know).  I wonder how long the brass trend is gonna last?  I would have a larger apron sink (they were definitely not popular when I designed this kitchen, so choice was limited).  I might have some fancy feet put on the cabinets and maybe some beautiful fretwork for the glass doors.  Other than that, I think it's pretty much stood the test of time, thank god;  because anyone that has ever remodeled a kitchen knows how much it costs and how much effort goes into it.

And so why I think white kitchens are here to stay is that they are classic.  I don't think my kitchen looks that different from any of the white kitchens that people are pinning on Pinterest these days.  How many times do you see a knotty alder or distressed kitchen pinned?  Not that many, if at all.  And I guess the proof is when people come to my house and ask if my cabinets are original (I think that's a compliment, or maybe they just look so old and worn out already!  They are white and therefore show chips and dirt easily, just a warning for ya!).

Here's some pictures of kitchens from a hundred years ago and you'll see what I mean about classic styles never going out of fashion.

If you're still reading this, then you deserve a medal!

Here's some more pretty pictures of white kitchens that you'll find on my Pinterest board.

kitchen from the movie "This is 40"

I'd definitely do a cabinet with the fretwork above.  Actually that gives me an idea, there maybe another DIY project coming!

The kitchen above, I die.  Perfect, except the orange stools, but that's minor.  Another want I have for my next kitchen is that beautiful coffered ceiling.  I should have done that in my kitchen, because when they took the wall down, they left a huge ugly beam.  I decided to deal with that by lowering the ceiling.  Sacrilegious I know.  But we didn't have a fancy kitchen designer or an unlimited budget at the time.  I also absolutely must have an adjoining family room with a gorgeous fire, repeat must!!

Nice example of subway tiles to the ceiling.  And oh look there are my stools, which are genuine Tolix that I picked up for $20 each.  Don't hate me.

More Tolix, love the pop of colors.

Gorgeous pendants.

More gorgeous pendants.  And look at that hood, what a statement.  Probably cost $5000.

OK, kill me now!  I just died and went to marble heaven.  So pretty, so sophisticated.  I just want to lick that sink!  Well not really, but really!?!

Now I'm starting to feel sick and think that my kitchen is really inadequate.  Marble where were you when I was designing?  I really only had soapstone or granite on my radar.  Thank goodness I didn't choose soapstone, because I think it's even more upkeep than marble.

Love the french cafe chairs.  You know I have some red ones that I might try around my table.

How much do you think the marble for this kitchen cost?

This is pretty, not sure if I want to clean two sinks though.  But if you lived in this house you'd have a team of cleaners, right?

I think that that Lindsey Adelman light above is a gazillion dollars, not to mention the stove.

Ah, Christopher Peacock's kitchen.  I believe he is the Grand-daddy of white kitchens.  I like to think I was there before him ;)

This one above kind of looks a bit like mine, don't you think, or am I just kidding myself?

Hate you and your lighted dresser gloriousness!

That makes me want to have an espresso, and a back-staircase in my next house, like Downton Abbey.  No actually I did live in a house in England with a servant's staircase, shame I don't have any pictures of that house. It also had a dumbwaiter and a secret door in a carved cabinet that had steps leading down to a wine cellar. Maybe that's where I get my passion for houses from.

This is another picture of the "This is 40" house taken from the other angle.  Love the fireplace but can't understand why someone would think that 50 blue pitchers would make good decor.

This seems doable and not over the top.  Love the built-in dresser.

One can but dream, right?

And just on the off chance that one of you reading this is a millionaire and wants a new kitchen, please call me as I'd love to design one for you, I'm serious.

Now I'm off to think about building the new banquette. You notice I said think about and not doing, someone kick me in the butt will ya?

You'll find the sources for photos on my Pinterest account.

New Blog Template

I hope you like the new blog look.  It really was about time.  It had become increasingly obvious to me that my blog, which I started 3 years ago, was looking terribly dated.  Everyone and their mother (literally) had better and more professional looking blogs than me.

Yep, that's bad.  I hate those sides.  And the page tabs.....just don't get me started.  So I thought I'd try and add some social contact buttons to the right hand side to make it look a bit more professional.  Let me tell you, it was like putting lipstick on a pig.  The buttons I found (free because I'm cheap) were the wrong size and color.  I added them, but the blog was starting to look like a Frankenstein blog.  There was only one thing I could do and that was to start afresh.

Now that's a totally scary thing to do.  After all blogger isn't exactly user friendly sometimes.  You click on the wrong thing accidentally and bam, it's a whole different look.  Good job I did my research and decided to back-up my old template just in case the new one didn't work out.  Umm, well even though there's a lovely back-up button right there on blogger, could I get it to work for me?  Nope, came back with a bunch of errors which might as well have been written in Chinese.  So I cautiously decided to try a different method of back-up where I went in and copied all of the HTML code for the template and pasted it into a word document.  Luckily that did the trick.

But I still wasn't about to let loose on my old blog just yet.  Blogger doesn't let you keep the old blog template so any changes you make go live right away.  I didn't want to risk doing "open heart surgery" on my blog without having a clear plan as to how it was going to look in the end.  So I created a dummy or trial blog to work on.  Now you're probably wondering why I didn't just pay someone with a lot more experience with design and with blogger.  Well, for one thing, timing.  I always want something done like yesterday, and I knew I'd be getting a lot more traffic tomorrow because my blog is being featured on Brooklyn Limestone.  So excited.  If you're visiting from there, welcome!  Another reason, money.  I know it only costs a few hundred for a nice design, but I don't make any money from my blog so the least amount of money I throw at it the better.  And finally the main reason is that I love a good challenge and am not frightened of a bit of DIY whether it's tiling a fireplace, reupholstering a chair, building furniture or indeed redesigning a blog.  And with so many resources available online, how hard can it be?

Well, it is quite hard.  Blogger makes it hard.  Why isn't there a center button for headers or titles?  Seems pretty obvious to me.  So you have to go in and add code.  Sometimes this works and sometimes this doesn't.  If you want those fancy social media buttons you have to add them yourself.

To center the blog title:
Go to Design - Template - Advanced - Add CSS
Then type in the following

#header-inner img {margin: 0 auto !important;}

#header-inner {text-align: Center ;}

To center page tabs:
Go to Design - Template - Advanced - Add CSS
Then type in the following

.PageList {text-align:center !important;}

.PageList li {display:inline !important; float:none !important;}

To add social media buttons:
Go to Design - Layout - Add a gadget - HTML/Javascript
In the content box type

<a href="URL Goes Here"><img src="Image Direct Link Goes Here" /></a>

Copy & paste the URL that you want the button to link to, e.g. your Pinterest account.

Go to Photobucket and find social media icons that you want to use (or I believe you can upload them in there yourself).  Click on the icon and a pop-up should appear that gives the Image Direct Link, select and copy this link and paste it in the code above.  Do this for each button.

If you want a button to link to your email type "mailto:youremailaddress" in the URL Goes Here part.

When I was somewhat satisfied with how the new blog was looking I copied the HTML and posted it over the old blog.  Scary moment!  But thankfully it worked.  It didn't save everything and I had to go in and put the social media buttons and a couple of other things in there again, but apart from that it was looking pretty good.  There are a few things I'll probably change.  I'd like the Blog Title to be larger, but the default only goes up to that size.  I also don't like the box going around the tabs.  When I tried to go in and change the size of the Post Title it wouldn't let me, so I guess I'm stuck with the size it is (it needs to be bigger).  I'm also sure that professional blog designers would be horrified with the amount of different colors I have used in the blog.  I think I'll keep on tinkering with it as the weeks go on, but for now it's a huge improvement.

I'd love to know what you think.

Oh I just realized I need a fancy signature at the bottom of each post.  I'll have to add that later.  But for now TTFN.

*Update
So this is what the blog looked like after I implemented the changes above.

I was frustrated that the preset tools in blogger only allowed me to have a Blog Title of 80px.  As I had been playing around with the HTML all day, it didn't seem so scary to me after all.  I knew that I could always revert back to the old template as long as I was careful.  I realized that because of the method I used to upload the new blog template I was unable to change any of the font sizes or colors.  I'd have to go in to the HTML code and manually change them.

It's a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack, but I managed to locate the code that I needed to change.  What I was most excited about was being able to get rid of the boxes around the tabs.  I'd seen a lot of other blogs that simply had a line at the top and bottom; far cleaner looking than the odd size boxes.  My husband who is a software engineer couldn't believe that I was manually searching for the code insisting that they have tools for that, but I'm impatient and I just wanted to get it done.

And here's how it looks as of now.  I'm sure I'll be changing or tweaking it again.  I'd like to make my photo round to offset all of the boxy lines.  I think I'll have to use photoshop or some other photo editing tool.