One Room Challenge- The Kitchen

Since moving in nearly five years ago, we’ve slowly updated many of the spaces in our house to bring our little ranch into the 21st century. The one glaring sore spot has been our kitchen. When we bought the house, it looked like this.

Grim, right? So we made a few, relatively easy fixes when we moved in.

That brick soaked up SO much paint but beyond happy we tackled that early on. Walls (which I JUST changed) are SW Sea Salt and bricks are another SW color- something Pearl. I’ll have to look it up. Here’s a view as you walk into the kitchen

This was taken after I updated the cabinet knobs and pulls (they’d previously been wooden with inlaid brass flowers). AND after we were forced to update our range when our old one started heating up even when the oven was turned off. So it’s much improved from what it once was. But still. Very, very sad.

Enter the One Room Challenge. Created by designer Linda Weinstein and sponsored by numerous home decor purveyors and by Better Homes & Gardens, it’s a 6 week challenge for designers (and guest designers like me) to tackle and complete a room or a project. I participated in the fall to motivate myself to finish our master bedroom which I’d been dragging my feet on for actual years. It worked- well, almost. I still need to either find or paint something to hang over our bed- but that’s a post for another day.

Past One Room Challenge designers have created some amazing spaces and I’m excited to follow along on their blog to see what they create this season. As for me, I have big plans for our space.

I’m using the above space I mocked up in the fall as a very loose inspiration for what the kitchen will become. We started painting the cabinets about two months ago since I had a feeling it might take us FOREVER. (It has). I’ve gotten about a million hardware samples and have ALMOST made up my mind about which way to go. So I need to get those ordered and installed. Also, I very aggressively ordered soft close drawer slides to replace our old slides but am having a devil of a time getting them installed. I can get them in, but the closing is anything but soft. That’s on my agenda for this week. As is painting the kitchen ceiling and ordering countertops. Visited the MS International warehouse in Norwood and these two quartzes are the frontrunners:

MSI Calacatta Verona Too veiny? Just right?

MSI Calacutta Clara (excuse the bad lighting) Too blah? Subtly perfect?

So wish me luck! Wish US luck, really- since this is definitely a team effort/scramble! Excited to officially kick things off!