They’re finally here: my first actual home tour photos! I took advantage of the decent sunshine we had a few weekends ago (and a freshly cleaned house) to snap a few pictures of our new kitchen. Without further ado (and also, people who take gorgeous pictures of home interiors must know magic!)…
We knew from the start that we wanted a white kitchen with some dark accents. When you’re picking out finishes and fixtures for a house, you just have to cross your fingers and hope that everything looks good together, and I think we really lucked out! The shaker-style cabinets are painted with Benjamin Moore White Dove, a gorgeous, creamy white that always manages to look amazing. The floors are porcelain 12×24″ tiles in a running brick pattern. We considered natural slate at one point, but were pretty easily talked out of it because it is hard to install and needs constant maintenance. We love the tile we went with instead. It looks just like slate (A friend of ours who is an architect was just saying yesterday how fantastic it looks!), hides dirt and crumbs, is a breeze to clean, and never needs to be sealed.
Because we do a lot of cooking, we chose a professional-series Blue Star gas range with 8 burners, and its been wonderful so far. We are really happy with the stainless steel finish, and love being able to cook so many things at one time. This particular range has both a grill and a griddle that can be swapped in for two of the burners, but we almost never use those features. Have we used all 8 burners at the same time yet? No, but we bought this baby with canning season in mind, so ask me again at the end of the summer!
Right next to our range is one of my favorite features in our kitchen: the pull-out spice cupboard. As you can see, we have a lot of spices, so many, in fact, that when I see a spice in a recipe and I don’t already have it, I’m shocked. I’m looking at you, Marjoram! In our old kitchen, the spice cupboard was a regular upper cabinet, and it was so deep and narrow and dark that spices were constantly going missing in its vast recesses. You always had to take everything out of the cupboard to find the spice you were looking for. We are all in love with the pull-out spice cupboard in the new kitchen! It has room for all of our spices, and they’re all easy to find and grab. I highly recommend it!
For a long, long time, we weren’t sure what we were going to put on the kitchen counters in the Dream House. To me, the counters kind of set the stage for the whole kitchen style, and we just didn’t know what surface material would give us the look we wanted AND be durable and easy to care for. We considered marble, quartz, wood, soapstone, concrete, and more. We liked the durability/affordability of granite, but didn’t want the counters loud, colorful, or super glossy. And then we stumbled upon the perfect solution at the home of an acquaintance: leathered granite. I think our fabricator uses the term “antiqued” instead of leathered or honed, but the top is basically roughed up just enough not to be high-gloss. I was worried that it would be uneven or jagged or rough, but the leathering gives our granite a soft, satin finish. And we lucked out and found a granite that was a really neutral gray with just a hint of flecking and movement, and it was on the less expensive end of the spectrum. It’s called Nordic White granite, and we couldn’t be happier with it.
And that brings us to the center of the kitchen–the island. We considered putting bar stools at the counter, but we wanted to keep the island open and free of clutter, and we wanted everybody to eat together at the kitchen table in the breakfast nook, so we decided not to go the bar stool route. There are cabinets and drawers down the side facing the range, and bookshelves down the back (more on that later!). And other than a very useful prep sink on top, there’s nothing on that counter but 40 square feet of beautiful, uninterrupted maple work space. It doesn’t usually look splotchy, but I decided to oil it right before I took the pictures, and that was a mistake!
I think that’s enough kitchen tour for one day. But don’t worry, there’s more to come–we’re only half way around the kitchen!
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