home tour: our kitchen!

So far I have shown you guys TWO spaces from our new home (well, new-ish... we've been here over a year and half now) including our living room and our dining room. Today the tour continues with our kitchen. The kitchen was originally an eat-in kitchen with a small dining area by the sliding door. We transformed that into a small sitting area and we also have a kids desk in this spot as well that serves as an organization area for school papers, the family calendar and a charging station for the kids' screens. Altogether we reference it as the "kitchen" but it's really so much more and as you can imagine... the heart of the home. We all spend about 80% of our time in this room and seriously, seriously LOVE it!

When we bought this home the kitchen was in SUPER rough shape... cabinet doors were broken, the floors had experienced some leaking from the refrigerator (likely the in-door water dispenser), the sink was permanently stained and the floor plan was a wreck and not at all a good use of space. (I'll show before pictures below) It took us a little bit of re-imagining to come up with this floor plan and once we did we knew it would be the absolute best use of space. Having a HUGE kitchen to start with is a big bonus, obviously. So the kitchen definitely had space going for it.

The first thing we did was make the island bigger! Bigger is always better and not only does the island have a ton of storage but it's also a great surface for homework, projects, gift wrapping and for making dinner or baking. This island is the literally the center of our home and activities as a family. Since we wanted a hood vent with no microwave - we had to find a new spot for the micro, here you can see we snuck it behind the island so it's not sticking out like a sore thumb.

My husband really wanted a single bowl sink... in my honest opinion, the jury is still out on if I like it more than two bowls. I will say it's great for big pots and pans and it looks great, but sometimes I still miss the double bowl, it's also a big pain to clean. Since these photos were taken we also put new blinds up here... every home is a work in progress, inluding mine!

Another change we made to the existing floor plan of the kitchen was to wrap the cabinets around this corner. It worked perfect for some wine storage and for our wine glasses above on the floating shelves. It serves as a "dry bar" of sorts and is super handy when we are entertaining to have another stretch of countertop. This is the second IKEA kitchen we have done and one of my favorite things about IKEA kitchens is the option to have an integrated dishwasher. With normal cabinet companies it's a huge upgrade for this custom feature, but not so with IKEA. I bet you can't tell where our dishwasher is in the above picture? It's totally hidden behind a cabinet front.

The floating shelves are constantly evolving - I'm always changing them up. But I feel like this feature makes any kitchen look bigger. Even in our previous home that had a TINY kitchen it really opened it up. The photos in this post are from last fall and wouldn't you know it just last week we finally had the tile backsplash installed - so I will try to show more updated photos on Instagram soon!

From this angle you can see how the desk (left) and sitting area (right) all work together with the entire kitchen. Unfortunately this desk is NEVER this clean... but let's just pretend it always is!

Let's talk a little bit about budget... shall we!?!? So obviously investing in a kitchen is NOT cheap... but I will clue you in on one trick we used: we used IKEA for our kitchen in our previous home and in this home. Thank goodness my husband is handy enough to put together and install the cabinets. It's a big job and one that you need quite a bit of experience for, but he did an amazing job. IKEA offers installation services so if you aren't willing to take it on yourself, I would recommend that route. In general I would say that an IKEA kitchen is about 50-60% less than traditional custom cabinets. I compare them to custom cabinets because really there are so many amazing customizations you can make with these that you can't get when you buy cabinets at the big box stores.

The big cost saver here is to wait for their Kitchen Sale - I believe they do the sale twice per year. When they do, they will give you 15% BACK from the purchase of your kitchen in gift cards. When we did this we used the gift cards to then purchase our countertops through them - so it was an amazing deal. You could also use the gift card towards their appliances as well (which are just Whirlpool under the IKEA name, FYI). So if you are thinking about an IKEA kitchen - watch for the sales!!!

Swapping out the small eating area for a small sitting area was one of our favorite decisions in this house. Its a great place to hang with a glass of wine or a book while I make dinner and the kids can sit at the small table for homework too. Plus this table opens up for storage and it's full of board games... so it's a great spot for an impromptu family game night too! What can we say, we love hanging out in the kitchen ;)

From the kitchen area you can see into the family room.... that tour is coming soon! So stay tuned...

Here is another view of the desk area. With all the kids sports and activities and school work this board keeps us all organized and on the same page. The photo doesn't do it justice... this thing is HUGE!

So that is the kitchen home tour! Whew... Scroll down for more "before" views.

Sources:

Cabinets, IKEA "Grimslov" in white

Counters, Caesar Stone

Metal Bar Stools - Target

Island Lights - West Elm (similar)

Sink Light - West Elm (similar)

Appliances - Samsung

Floors - Viking Brand in "Sable" Oak

Kids Desk - World Market (similar)

Bulletin Board - Amazon

Chairs in Sitting Area - similar