Plans for the Kitchen

All the progress reports have been about the roof lately so I am excited to take a turn and instead talk about our plans for the Kitchen! The kitchen is definitely the room I am most excited for. Originally it had dated cabinets and Carolina blue counters, which I actually really loved. I could have just repaired the holes and installed new flooring and been happy.

But, as all old home owners know, you will always run into issues you weren’t expecting. Of course there was the giant hole in the ceiling but there was also a wall made of plywood, rotting and termite damaged wood in the floor and badly placed appliances with electrical outlets that would have never passed inspection.

So we decided to demo the whole room! And while it has sat blank for a year now while the roof took priority, I have the whole thing designed and all the cabinetry actually sitting in the guest room!

The new kitchen has upper cabinets with glass doors all the way to the ceiling, lower cabinets full of drawers and an island that has more storage than I could have ever dreamed!

I wish I could tell you that this dream kitchen is being custom built by an amazing local carpenter but unfortunately our current budget didn’t allow that. We asked for a few estimates and what we got back was about 3x our entire kitchen budget and that was just the cabinetry. So we went a different route…we drove to Charlotte where we custom designed our IKEA kitchen!

I know many of you are probably upset and can’t believe we are putting an Ikea kitchen in this historic home but it was what I believe to be our best option for what our family has and needs at the moment. One day I hope we are able to have our dream kitchen designed but until then, IKEA it is!

We started online using IKEA’s kitchen design software where we played with layouts and different cabinet options. IKEA really has an almost unlimited amount of arrangements and options which makes designing any space fun. Ultimately we picked the Bobdyn Cabinet fronts in the off-white color. It has a traditional look which I really love and think goes with the feel of the house. The kitchen does not have a pantry so having all the lower drawers will be great for storage while the upper glass doors will provide plenty of space to display pretty dishes.

I can’t wait to share more of the details with you soon, including the light fixtures, hardware and appliances we have picked!