Our Kitchen Before

Inspiration image via

Over the weekend, I shared some videos on Instagram Stories of our kitchen, and what are plans are to remodel it on a budget. You guys were so excited about the project, that I thought I’d share more details with you today as well as some inspiration photos that I’ve been staring at for months now.

When we moved into our house over a year ago, one of the things we talked about doing from the very start was updating the kitchen. As you can see from the photo below, it’s a pretty good size but dark and uninviting, and we want to change that before the baby comes. We took this in the brightest time of the day so you could see what it looks like, but normally it’s even darker!

Before Photo

What we love

The great part about it is that everything is brand new, including the appliances. The layout is great, and there is plenty of space for cooking and eating at the counter. Plus there is a ton of cabinet space.

What we don’t love

While having all new appliances is amazing and will save us a ton of money in this project, we have a lot of issues with the kitchen, most of them aesthetic. First, we only have one window in the whole room which makes it one of the darker rooms in our otherwise bright home. We don’t have the budget to add more windows, so we want to brighten the space using other techniques. The black granite countertop and dark backsplash add to the darkness of the room. Those have got to go! Second, the cabinets are painted a really weird yellow/beige color that looks incredibly dated. They also have dental crown molding along the top that looks like teeth. Everyone who walks into the room comments on it so those are out too. Third, we need more counter space for when more than one person is cooking in the kitchen, and we figured the most affordable way to remedy this is by adding an island in the middle of the room. We’re lucky that there is a big open space for it.

The challenge

Brighten and update our kitchen with a $6,000 budget from our friends at Lowe’s. This will cover the cost of countertops (and installation), a new backsplash, cabinet paint, new hardware, a new sink and faucet, a garbage disposal (finally!), and brighter lighting. Because we are working with a smaller budget, we immediately decided to skip big changes like knocking down walls and moving things around, which we’re totally fine with.

The timeline

Last weekend we went to Lowe’s to pick out everything mentioned above. We brought most of it home, but have to wait for the countertop to be installed in the next two weeks. In the meantime, we’re going to paint the cabinets and install the backsplash on our own.

The inspiration

I’ve had a kitchen inspiration board on Pinterest for years now, so I started there. That’s where the photos in this post come from. As you can see, we’re going for light, bright, and happy! While most of these spaces have marble countertops, that was out of the question for what we wanted to spend, so we ended up going with a quartz called Blano Orien, which looks similar to white marble. I really wanted to do all of our hardware (including faucets) in polished brass for that gold look, but Anel ended up convincing me to go with polished chrome instead so it would be easier to match everything and so that it would feel current for longer. We both agreed that the gold will probably go out of style soon. I love the cute chrome doorknobs we picked up for the cabinets.

The backsplash was probably the hardest decision we had to make because there are just so many choices that would look great. We ended up going with a smaller subway tile that we’ll install with white grout for a really clean look.

I seriously cannot wait for all of it to come together!