One Room Challenge - Week 1
Woohoo! The One Room Challenge is back for the fall! For those of you who may not know what the One Room Challenge is - it is an 8 week home renovation challenge… the goal is for all participants to finish their project from start to finish in 8 weeks! Do you ever have a home project that just drags on and on and on? I have this problem a lot! The One Room Challenge helps push all of the participants to FINISH the dang thing! This Spring was the first time I participated and I had a blast! If you haven’t checked out my Spring ORC project, please check it out here!
One of the other amazing things about participating in the One Room Challenge is all of the amazing, creative, and truly stunning projects happening by other designers/creators/diyers at the same time. There is so much inspiration to gain from following along with all of the participants! Everyone is posting their Week 1 posts this week… go check them out on the One Room Challenge Blog!
So lets get to this Fall’s project. It is time for a Kitchen mini-renovation! We are not in the position to be able to totally renovate the kitchen how I want so we are going to do an update to the look and add some additional functionality while we are at it! Truth be told, when I first moved in with Jeremy 5 years ago, we did a kitchen glow up then - thinking we were going to sell the house within 3 years and just wanted to make it look less outdated to get better bang for our buck when we went to sell. But here we are 5 years later and we have no real plans to leave this house anytime soon since we have done so many updates to it we love.
So I want to start with the true ”before” when I moved in. The cabinets were a medium tone wood with my least favorite black granite countertops. The ceramic tile floor was the worst 12x12 dingy looking tile. It just felt so incredibly dark and dreary like the whole house did for the most part.
In my first glow up, I was going for inexpensive with a big impact. The first thing we did was paint the cabinets. This was a really inexpensive way to update the kitchen and make it feel so much brighter but only spent about $200. At the time, we opted for painting with Oil Based paint - white on the main cabinets and medium gray on the island. We opted for Oil Based paint at the time because it really lays the best. The downside, especially for the white, is that it yellows over time. We didn’t really think this would be a problem because we for sure thought we would have moved out by the time it started yellowing. Well, we didn’t. And they have definitely yellowed.
The second part of the first glow up was to update the floors. Since the ugly ceramic tile ran under the cabinets and it would be a huge mess to tear it up, we decided to go right over the top with luxury vinyl tiles. At the time, we had laminate in the other spaces of the house so we went with a 12x24 porcelain look to not clash with the wood look of the laminate. I would definitely do this flooring differently knowing now that we plan to stay in the house and we have since replaced all of the laminate. But, it is what it is.
We also took off the 4" granite backsplash and replaced with a basic white subway backsplash to make it look a little more custom, but definitely nothing special. It did require some creativity, though, as the granite installers left a huge gap between the wall and the countertop that was covered by the ugly 4" granite backsplash.
Lastly, we added some new furniture and light fixtures to give a bit more storage and a small coffee area on the big open wall. I think this wall is technically supposed to be for a small table since there is no dedicated eat in area in the house but it is such a narrow space, fitting a table just doesn't seem like it would work well.
So here is where the kitchen currently is after the mini glow up 5 years ago and what we are starting with for this reno!
So onto the design plan for this much more extensive glow up/mini renovation! Below is the design concept for this new updated kitchen! We are going to keep the main cabinets white but the island and new coffee bar cabinets are going to be a deep navy to mesh with the living room and water that we live on. The main cabinets will keep the black granite - not in the budget to replace with quartz or anything else right now but the island and coffee bar is getting a gorgeous butcher block to really warm up the space! Mixed metals will also give the space a fun feel with both matte black and brushed brass metals throughout. New lighting will also give a big wow factor in the space! I’m so pumped for this new feel in this space!
In addition to a different design, we are adding functionality as well. There were 2 main functionality improvements that were a must have for me. 1. Substantial addition of cabinets to add storage and dedicated coffee area with prep sink and 2. Larger island area to allow for 4 people to sit at the bar top to eat since we have no dedicated eating area.
Here are all of the things I want/need to accomplish to make this kitchen glow up come to life. Let’s see how well I can stay on track because there is SO MUCH TO DO!!!!
- add plumbing to back wall for coffee bar
- repaint walls/ceilings
- install new cabinets for coffee bar wall including additional pantry cabinets
- paint/repaint all cabinets
- replace island countertops with butcher block and add butcher block to coffee bar wall
- new backsplash throughout
- extend island to seat 4 people
- new lighting throughout
- replace some existing upper cabinets with open shelving
- new cabinet hardware throughout
- new faucets
- and probably so much more than I will find out along the way!
I can’t wait to really get started on this reno! Join me and follow along for the next 8 weeks to see how this kitchen glow up turns out! I’d love to know what you think along the way!
Happy designing + diying!
Katie
You've got such a big project ahead of you - here for it!! Good luck :)