View 1:
We made the pantry area a little narrower but a million times more efficient, which allowed us to make the countertops on either side of the stove three inches wider. You wouldn't think that small amount would be noticeable, but it is. We also changed the cabinets, which were a jumbled hot mess of pots and pans inside, to pull out drawers, complete with a hidden drawer in the largest one on each side, for pan lids and other items.
Here's an open drawer, with the hidden drawer partially pulled out:
I knew I would enjoy having the lids in their own drawer, but I didn't anticipate just how pleased this simple thing would make me. No more banging and clanging as I reach for a pan - just take one out, and then open the lid drawer and find its mate.
Oh, and we not only have a cabinet over the refrigerator now, but it's pretty deep. Not gonna lie, I have to open the fridge doors in order to open that cabinet if I'm not using a step stool, but it's great to have so much extra storage for items that I rarely use:
Not only do I get all of that storage, but the kitchen looks neater because we can't throw anything on top of the refrigerator now!
Another new thing for us was having a tile backsplash - again, a first after all these years:
I wanted to keep the backsplash simple so that all of my colorful accessories would pop. This is a matte subway tile with dark gray grout.
View 2:
Quite a difference, right?
This side of the kitchen looks the most changed. We had the bar lowered to counter height, which not only opened up the room immensely, but it made the countertops about 12 inches wider. You can see the trash bin that we added to the left of the dishwasher, which extended the entire cabinet section an extra 18 inches. It's taking up the same amount of space as before, only now you can't see our trash and recycling cans. Another thing we did was to make the drywall on the left side of the upper cabinets even with the cabinets. It's nice to have complete clearance under the entire set of cabinets now. The outlet for the garbage disposal/outlet was moved over, which makes for a stretch for me to flip on the disposal, but the other option was doing an air switch, which meant drilling a hole in the granite, and we just weren't completely on board with that.
I also changed the drawer set to make them wider, eliminating that silly cabinet on the edge. I think I've shown you the insides of the drawers in a previous post, but I can't resist showing them once more:
Probably more than you wanted to see, haha, but everything is so organized that I wanted to show my drawer contents to the world! They also have soft-close dampers, so you can't slam your finger in a drawer...plus it's just fun to watch them close the last few inches on their own.
The black granite countertop is really hard to photograph - it washes out so easily in most shots, whereas in person, it's beautiful. When we started this project, I wanted black countertops, but Jeff was not on board. My mom suggested looking at honed granite, which is a matte finish, and I really liked that. Once we made our trip to Houston to look at full slabs of black honed granite in the granite yards, Jeff was fully behind it.
This is the best close up I was able to get, showing the true color.
We chose our slab but shortly before installation, the granite guy came out to measure so he could start his cuts, and said that the slab was short by three inches...which just so happened to be the extra three inches that we added on to the trash bin because we decided we wanted the cans to fit in horizontally, so we could have both trash and recycling there. Our contractor made a call to the granite yard, and they did have the same granite in a longer slab, but instead of getting one that was 2 cm thick, we had to get the 3 cm thing slab. Jeff jokes that our trash pullout probably cost us an extra $500 - I actually have no idea as we haven't reconciled everything with our contractor. But honestly, it's one of our favorite changes to the kitchen, so it was worth it.
The trash bin that changed things...
When we got rid of the higher counter bar, we lost an electrical outlet that was in the wall, so our electrician wired a new one on the side of the trash bin. When he was working on it, he asked if I'd like the outlet to have USB chargers in it - I didn't know that was an option, but I'm glad we did it.
There is only about 7 inches of overhang, so we didn't have to use any added support underneath the counter, which I was happy about. We considered having it extend enough so we could put low bar stools underneath it, but at this stage, we didn't think we'd use it enough to lose more space in the family room. Maybe if we had young children at home, that would have been nice, but it wasn't needed for us empty nesters. The edges of the granite are done in a waterfall finish, which we thought went well with the style of the cabinets.
I love our new sink so much - I have wanted a single-bowl sink forever, and now I finally have one. Plus, because it's mounted under the granite, there is another inch of depth. I also had the drawer done as a tilt-out, and I store scrubbing items in it. Makes for a nice look when the kitchen is clean - no sponges hanging around.
View 3:
The added panel on the side of the refrigerator, along with the deep upper cabinets, makes it look more built in. And how do you like change to the wall to the right of the fridge?
WE LOVE OUR COFFEE STATION!! Yes I'm shouting, because it's everything we'd envisioned, and more. This was a new thing for our contractor to do as well, so it was fun for everyone to watch it come together. I like choosing which coffee mug from the shelves above to use each day, and I love seeing them on display like this.
Everything coffee and tea related fits in the cabinet. It's so nice to have it all in the same area, and super handy to just reach for whatever you need.
If you made it to the end of this post, I thank you for sticking with me. It's the longest of the reveal posts, I promise, but we basically got an entirely new kitchen, so I really wanted to show you everything.
Details: Tile is made by Pier, colorway Balboa. Granite is Virginia Mist honed, in black. Faucet is by Delta, style is Mateo. Drawer pulls and cabinet knobs were purchased via Houzz.com. All paint is Sherwin Williams - walls are Silverpointe, cabinets and trim are Extra White. Light fixtures are original to the house, with the exception of the under cabinet lighting that we love. Cabinets were custom made by a very talented local cabinet maker.
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