Kitchen Refresher
When deciding to buy our house, I liked almost everything very much. The white woodwork and trim, the layout, the flooring, etc. The one area of the house I thought could use some sprucing up was the kitchen. The layout was great but the cabinets were too light for my taste, the countertops were blah laminate and the sink was over-mounted with a plain-Jane faucet set. We have done a couple things here and there to improve the kitchen since moving in. Those have included painting, replacing our sliding door for French doors and getting a new faucet set. We recently decided we wanted to make some bigger upgrades. We first talked about introducing a backsplash. We decided if we were going to do this, why wouldn't we go the extra step and get new countertops, too. They were blah after all!
Here's a little recap of what we did...
Cabinets
Even though I don't love the color of the cabinets, I didn't want to paint or alter them. To give them an update, I purchased new drawer pulls. Ryan kindly installed them for me. He is meticulous when it comes to these type of things and did a great job.
Backsplash
I knew I wanted to do a subway tile backsplash. Simple. Timeless. Classic. The only decision to make was whether to do white or off-white. With a little Pinterest searching, I decided to go for an ivory option. It was a better choice for the color palette of our house. I wanted the grout to stand out so we selected a medium-tone brown.
Countertops
Knowing what I wanted for the backsplash, I decided I wanted to add some contrast with darker countertops. I'm not a fan of busy countertops and I like the ones with a matte, or as we learned, honed (industry lingo) finish. This definitely minimizes the options available. I knew I was drawn to soapstone but didn't really know anything about it. We learned that it is a non-porous stone that doesn't need to be sealed like granite. It typically has some veining throughout and darkens naturally over time. You can speed up the darkening process with application of mineral oil to the countertops. The more we learned, the more we knew soapstone was the right fit for us. Low mantainence and natural beauty make for an excellent combination for kitchen countertops.
With this project, I gained a little insight into what it would be like to build a new home or remodel an existing one ... And, boy, it seems stressful! Decisions to make, decisions to second guess and then waiting for everything to be completed. As it usually does, everything came together and we are really loving the new look of our kitchen.
Thanks to our friend Steve who helped Ryan tear out the existing countertops. And a special thanks to our neighbor Ron for putting us in touch with the stone fabricator and tile installer. We really appreciate all his help in making this a reality for us.
