Completed Kitchen

Our new kitchen was completed by the end of June 2012 and I haven't blogged anything about it. It's Thanksgiving Day today and I have decided that *now* is a great time to update this blog. I must be crazy. But, perhaps, I am feeling very thankful today as we started preparing our first Thanksgiving dishes together in our new, beautiful, and highly functional kitchen. We are very blessed, indeed!

By the beginning of July, our kitchen is fully functional with a working sink, stove, fridge, dishwasher and microwave. By today, Thanksgiving Day, I have very little memory of the pain, hard work, and stresses we went through renovating this kitchen. I have even less memory of the old kitchen. It could be the case of renovator's amnesia.

Our new kitchen looks great and works great! It is where we spent most of our time together as a family of three, cooking and eating. It is easy to find things and store things away in it, which makes prepping before and cleaning after cooking a cinch and a joy. Best of all, it is a pleasure to work in this gleaming yet cozy kitchen whether cooking a meal, baking a pie, or just making a cup of tea!

We wrote our Kitchen Mission Statement in May 2012 as a way to clarify and ground our vision in creating the new kitchen. I believe our new kitchen indeed fulfilled the Kitchen Mission Statement! I am very proud of ourselves in making our kitchen vision come true.

Our new kitchen renovation has been one of the best investments of time, money, and energy (including elbow grease). We certainly learned a lot about construction, kitchen appliances, power tools, paint colors, ourselves and each other!

I say, "I love our kitchen!" pretty much every day. D. loves it, too!

So, without further ado...

The obligatory before photos:

sink wall

stove wall

And, ta da...

new sink wall

new stove wall

closer-up of stove wall

newly painted china cabinet with new quartz countertop

new fridge wall

I almost forgot to include this:

Pantry with IKEA pull out drawers!

What a transformation!

Here are the details:

Appliance garage (we measured it to fit our Kitchen Aid standing mixer, blender and toaster)

Sink details: grill on sink, soap dispenser, gooseneck faucet, air switch and air gap

Oh, we love those runnels!

 Oil/Vinegar pull out rack

 Spice drawer

The coolest toe-kick shut-off valve (D. made this!)

Undersink pull-out trash, compost and recycle system

IKEA pull-out drawer
as an undersink trash pull-out

More gorey details:
Cabinetry: InnerMost (from Home Depot) - La Porte (their shaker style) in Divinity Classic finish. The KD is a superstar (we love Sherry)! She was so patient with me as I kept changing the layout for the millionth times. The InnerMost rep is also amazing! We are very happy customers!
Pulls: Asbury in polished chrome (from Restoration Hardware-RH)
Knobs: 1 1/4" glass knobs with polished nickel base (from RH as well)
Countertop: Calacatta Oro 2cm marble slab (it took forever to find one that we love, but we finally did!) and prefab white quartz for the china cab (don't know the name of it... We saw the remnant piece on our way out from the fabricator's warehouse.)
Backsplash: 1"x6" white Daltile subway tiles (from Home Depot)
Sink: 28" wide Julien 025 806 J18 (to fit our 33" sink base) plus grid
Faucet: Grohe Concetto Dual Spray Pull Down 32665 in Polished Chrome
Soap dispenser: Blanco Alta Soap / Lotion Dispenser 440046 in Polished Chrome
Garbage disposal: Whirlpool GC 5000 3/4 hp (from IKEA)
Air gap: Blanco 44036 in Polished Chrome
Air switch: Enviropure ENVAS1CH in Polished Chrome
Stove: 30" GE monogram gas stove ZGP30NRSS
Hood: 36"W, 1000cfm KOBE CH0036SQB-1 (seems to work well enough with our GE monogram stove)
Duct cover: 12" H and 36" W, KOBE CH0036DC12 308 to match the hood
Refrigerator: 36" counter-depth french door Kitchen Aid KFCP22EXMP
DW: Miele G5575SCSF
Microwave: 0.8 cu ft Panasonic NN-SD372S perfect for our family of three! (From target.com)
Flooring: site finished Santos Mahogany (2 coats of Traffic Satin, and 1 coat Traffic semi gloss which darkened the *eek!* pinkish floor to a beautiful reddish brown we now love.)
Lighting: canned LED lights on dimmer for ceiling, and puck LED light for under cabinet lighting, IKEA's Inreda LED lights, and Restoration Hardware school-house light with oil rubbed bronze finish for the nook
Wall color: a custom color, somewhere between Benjamin Moore's Wickham Gray and Grey Cashmere, in satin finish.
Ceiling color: Benjamin Moore Mountain Peak White, in satin finish
Trim color: Benjamin Moore's match of Home Depot Behr Pot Of Cream in Semi Gloss finish.

The big Question: How long did it take us to renovate a kitchen?

The not so simple Answer: Well, let's see. We started working with our amazing CKD, Carlene Anderson, in September of 2011, and received our final drawings in December 2011. We wrote our Kitchen Mission Statement in May 2012. It took us almost 9 months, maybe even longer, to design our Inner Most kitchen cabinetry working with the super patient Sherry Lyons from Home Depot (countless iterations until finally one day the cabinetry design just clicked for me). The kitchen renovation itself started in full swing around the last week of September 2012. The new kitchen was completed by the end of June 2013.

While it took us about 9 months to physically birth our new kitchen, it took us almost two years going from a seed of an idea to its completion.

We couldn't have arrived here, at the completion of a successful renovation project, without the assistance of our friends, family and wonderful craftsmen. We are grateful for all of of you who has encouraged and inspired us with ideas, skills, patience, craftsmenship, friendship, enthusiasm and good humor! Thank you so much!

Lastly, I am very grateful for D. and M. for their unwavering support, love and faith throughout the whole process. You are most awesome!