Lemon Stripes Kitchen Renovation Reveal with Julia Dzafic

Here it is – our kitchen renovation reveal! I’m so excited to finally be sharing our finished kitchen with you guys. The whole project took about six weeks and while it was stressful to have everything in our cabinets strewn all over the place, and people in and out of our house constantly, I’m so happy that we did it… and before the baby comes!

Our kitchen is such a central and highly used room in our home so it was important to me that I loved it. While it was fine before, I now feel happy walking into the space. It’s bright and light, and has such a better overall vibe. It inspires me to cook healthy meals, and makes me want to have people over to the house more often because inevitably that’s where everyone ends up hanging out.

Our original inspiration for the kitchen renovation was just very white and bright so that I could add in my own pops of color with ginger jars, flowers, and accessories. There isn’t a ton of natural light in the room, but now since the kitchen renovation, it looks sunny all day long. That does wonders for your mood.

Here’s a reminder of our project and the challenge: We teamed up with Lowe’s to make some simple cosmetic changes to our kitchen. Our budget was $6000 and we managed to stay within that! You can shop the products we used by hovering over the image below or scrolling down for a full list of links.

Kitchen Cabinets

The first step was painting the cabinets. Our amazing handyman helped us by taking off all of the doors, knobs and awful dental molding. He painted the cabinet doors in the garage. While the first coat of paint dried, he painted the sides and the shelves. He did two coats of paint on everything and the previously beige/yellow color disappeared without a trace. He replaced the dental molding with a simpler crown molding and that made almost as big of a difference as the paint itself.

Kitchen Backsplash

While the doors were off, we removed the ugly backsplash and I did a little happy dance. We knew we wanted to go with subway tiles, but had some debate as to the size of the tiles and the color of the grout. In the end we went with a smaller subway tile because the room is pretty small. I didn’t want the big tiles to overwhelm the space. Although grey grout may have been more practical with cooking splatter, I really loved the all white look.

Kitchen Countertops

Picking countertops was probably the hardest decision we had to make. On our three hour trip to Lowe’s where we made all of the decisions, we loved the more natural look of granite but couldn’t find one that was white enough. In a last minute decision (literally we were about to pay), I switched to a Silestone quartz option. I was nervous it would look fake or weird, but it is so lovely in person and incredibly durable. My old granite counters somehow always looked dirty, and even though my new ones are white, they’re easier to keep clean.

Kitchen Sink

Our old kitchen sink was tiny, and it felt frustrating to clean even smaller pots and pans. Water would splash everywhere! We went with the biggest sink that would fit in the space (33″), and it’s been great. You can’t see it in photos, but we also added a garbage disposal which feels like such a luxury after not having one for over a year. We picked a simple chrome faucet that I knew we’d never get sick of. It matches the chrome knobs on the cabinets nicely.

Other Kitchen Details

Below the sink, I put in a cute striped Dash & Albert rug with a thick rug pad so that when I’m using the butcher block or washing dishes, my feet have a little padding. As you can see in the photos below, Boots thinks it’s his bed.

We added two blue and white Serena & Lily bistro counter stools to match our kitchen table chairs. They look so adorable, I can hardly stand it.

We thought about building an island, but that wasn’t an option in our budget. Luckily we found a great butcher block top removable island that fit in the open space perfectly. Added bonus? The price! Having this extra counter space has made a huge difference when I cook, and I have so much more room for chopping. It also has a ton of storage space, which helped to un-crowd some of our lower cabinets.

Scroll down to see before and after pics. I hope you enjoy the transformation as much as I do!