A Mini Kitchen Renovation

The best compliment I can receive is when a client calls me back for another project. That phone call makes me feel better than I can express. It lets me know that the previous job was a total success with my client feeling happy with the end result.

I got a phone call about one year ago from a client who I had renovated their powder bath. They were ready to tackle the kitchen. Their kitchen was a great size and had a good layout. They felt it was dated with granite countertops and antiqued, cream cabinets. And I agreed. We could do a lot without changing the layout to make the kitchen look and feel brand new. To give you an idea of how it looked, here is where we started:

I think you get the idea. Dated, right? The only part that was not dated were the lights. When I had renovated the bathroom, we had decided to go ahead and replace all of the kitchen and dining room lighting. It was a good way to start the idea of updating the kitchen without the full commitment. Lighting can make a huge impact and it took the space to another level without having to redo everything at that time. So, when we began this kitchen renovation, all of the lights were in place. We just wanted to make sure all of the changes we made would work well with them.

One of the first decisions we made was to replace the cabinets doors instead of just painting them. The existing doors had heavy details that were very traditional and looked good 10 years ago. Painting them would have looked like we were putting a band aid on rather than making them look current. We went with ones that look similar to this:

We replaced all the doors including the glass ones. What a huge difference this one change made for the space. Here are some pics during the process:

Part of the fun of a project like this is searching for all of the components. The countertops, hardware, new sinks and faucets were the main areas we wanted to change. We had so much fun finding all of the elements. We changed the stainless steel sinks to white porcelain.