Today we are finally revealing the kitchen and dining room that we’ve been working on for months! So buckle up because this is a pretty long post! I’ll give all the details on what we did, products we chose, and our new layout.
For a few months now we’ve been working on a house we call “The Walnut House” and a huge part of that was the kitchen and dining room. When I say it was a huge part, I mean I worked on this kitchen more than any other project ever. I tried things I’ve never done in previous renovations which made it all the more complicated, but it was worth it- I’m so happy with how this kitchen turned out! To me, the kitchen perfectly tied together the rest of the house and really gave it the look I was after.
I’m having a hard time naming the style of this house… Is it modern cottage? Cozy transitional? You tell me! I had a vision for this house as soon as I saw it, but I don’t really know what to call it. I wanted fun and color, but cozy and warm as well.
Before we dive in, here’s a reminder of where this kitchen started when we bought it:
The kitchen was left a mess, but we knew we would gut the whole thing anyway. We wanted a whole new layout, and wanted to blend the kitchen and dining room together.
You enter the kitchen from a small entrance through the soon-to-be dining room. Here’s what that looked like before…
The idea…
We were working with a long, skinny kitchen and a long, skinny dining room with a small doorway between them. We wanted to open up that doorway and make the kitchen and dining room flow together, and make the space feel bigger and brighter.
To do that, we doubled the doorway space and added a backsplash and cabinets on the far wall of the dining room to make a bar area / extended kitchen area. That also helps us shorten the dining room and make it a little less awkwardly long.
As you can tell from this extremely professional sketch, the plan for the dining room was to match the kitchen cabinets, have floor to ceiling cabinets on each side, and exposed shelves in the middle.
Base cabinets are in!
For the base cabinets we used the Lowes unfinished cabinets and painted them Soft Sage by Sherwin Williams. I will admit, once I saw the color in person I was surprised. I was going after a dirtier beigey green, and this color looked a bit more mint green in person. I ended up really liking the color, but in the future I would’ve gone a little darker.
The floors were also put in around this time, and I’m OBSESSED! We used this engineered hardwood from Home Depot. I’m absolutely in love with this flooring. The blonde wood transformed the space immediately and made it so bright!
Upper cabinets & finishing touches
We chose this zellige white 5×5 tile for the main kitchen. We wanted something different but still complimenting- so we went with a checkerboard pattern with the same tile in white and grey for the dining room wall.
The brass cabinet hardware is some of my favorite hardware I’ve ever used. I love the worn brass look next to the pop of color on the cabinets. I used these knobs on the walnut upper cabinets as well!
Cabinet handles & cabinet knobs
The completed dining room:
I am SO happy we widened the entrance between the dining room and kitchen, making it flow together beautifully.
The completed kitchen
The upper cabinets are Ikea – I love the height they give this kitchen by going to the ceiling.
That about does it for this kitchen and dining room! I had such a fun time renovating this kitchen and I would love to hear what you think about it.
As always, I post progress information as we go on my Instagram, so follow along if you like to see the step by step process!
To see more of this house check out our renovations page where we have the details on this whole house. Thanks so much for following along!
