Creating Our Farmhouse Kitchen

Lifestyle

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Ever since we first looked at our house before putting in an offer, Zac and I began dreaming about all of the projects we wanted to do to make it feel like our own! #1 on that list was our kitchen and attached laundry room. It’s a space we knew we’d be using heavily everyday, and since our home is open-concept, the kitchen really is one of the main feature points in the body of the house.

My inspiration heading into design decisions about this space was that I wanted it to be bright, fun, and happy. Truly, I think I used the word “happy” as a meter stick when picking out finishes and colors. Everything I had pinned on Pinterest up to this point had been in the green family. I had just seen so many gorgeous, muted kitchens in olive + forest green tones that felt so sleek and modern that I was just in love!! But as I actually began thinking about Zac and I’s personalities and the feeling in the space we wanted to create, I decided that muted green just wasn’t for us here! A couple of months earlier we had helped Zac’s sister Morgan with some updates in her kitchen, and as part of that project, I had painted a hutch for her in this beautiful Pigeon Blue color. I absolutely loved it, and joked about using it for the kitchen but thought it might be too bright for the space. As soon as we decided against green though because we wanted something brighter and more joyful, I knew Pigeon Blue was my color! From there, the rest of our finishes and fixtures to create our happy, farmhouse kitchen just fell into place! But there was a good bit of work that needed to be done before we could get to the fun stuff!

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A Look at the Before

Our first priority was to create more cabinet space for storage both in the kitchen and laundry room. We also didn’t love the way the refrigerator was floating in the corner of the room with nothing to box it in. So, we had a few cabinets installed!

Next came a series of late nights to take all the cabinet doors off, paint all the cabinets- a couple of coats!- and then reinstall everything. We elected to hand-paint the cabinets ourselves rather than have them sprayed in order to save a good chunk of money! Plus, the paint I chose was a chalk paint, which does not require the wood to be sanded beforehand as it’s incredible forgiving and smooth to go on. I also love to paint, so I didn’t mind tackling this ourselves!

I used an elaborate system of post-in notes to make sure we kept track of which door belonged to which cabinet!

After everything had dried and put back into place, we installed the cabinet hardware, and it was starting to look like what we’d dreamed!

The next couple of steps, I don’t have documentation of! Things were starting to happen fast as I had agreed to host a bridal shower at my house the following weekend and needed the kitchen to be done prior to that. In hindsight… I won’t do this again haha!

After the cabinets were complete, we had our new countertops installed. To match with all the bright white we had going on, we went with a clean white marble to tie everything together. I had picked out my dream sink- a single, white farmhouse sink, and that was installed at the same time as the countertops as it actually lies underneath the counters on the rim.

The final (and hardest!!!) step was to install the tile backsplash. If you look at the before photos, the backsplash was a patterned tin material that just was not our style, but was easy enough to rip out. Installing the tiles took a lot of precision, Zac quickly learning how to use a wet saw, us realizing that tiles cannot stick when they are wet… and a lot of trial and error to get our tiles cut perfectly, dried enough, and then installed as straight as possible. Thank goodness I’m married to an engineer! This part of the project definitely had us at our wit’s end haha! But the result was so beautiful!

With that, I added some final touches to decor to create our look, and we were ready for the bridal shower and for Christmas in our new kitchen! Take a look at the after!