A running timeline of that time I decided to rage buy a double oven, which effectively cascaded into a kitchen “refresh” project.
Backstory:
We relocated to the Raleigh Durham area the summer of 2017. In addition to job opportunities, and proximity to family, we were really excited about buying a home. I spent the better part of 2.5 years learning the entire real estate market– looking at new construction developments, highway expansions and even announcements for new high-end grocery stores. It was all consuming, and I will admit that I loved every single moment of it.
Fast-forward to March 2020. We got sent home for 2 weeks to “flatten the curve” and then over the next month it became clear that this pandemic wasn’t going anywhere quickly. We’d been saving for years, and we knew that if we wanted a shot at buying our own home we needed to move quickly.
After looking at almost every house in the entire Triangle region (I wish I was joking!), in late May I stumbled upon the listing for our house and audibly gasped when I saw this kitchen. It was such a loud gasp, that my husband thought I’d hurt myself in the kitchen.
What was it about this kitchen?
One of the biggest trends in the Triangle area in kitchen design is actually one of my personal biggest pet peeves: the sink in the island. I know it makes the kitchen triangle efficient,but I hate it for two specific reasons. First, my husband and I suck at putting dishes away. The plastics come out of the dishwasher and sit in the drain until one of us finally breaks down and puts them away. {yes, I know that we could just put our dishes away, but after 15 years, this is just what it is} Also, yes, I do know that dishwashers have come a long way in drying plastics, which leads to my second point: I wanted all of that space for baking. I wanted the absolute freedom to bake 12 different batches of cookies at the same time. And this glorious island was the key to that magical lifestyle.
The second major reason I loved this kitchen is for the storage space. Between the sheer number of cabinets and the deep pantry, I would never again have to play tetris with my cookware.
So we found a realtor, toured it and put in an offer that was accepted all within 48 hours. Chaos.
While I loved the island and the storage, I knew that eventually I would need to get a double oven in that kitchen to be completely happy. But it was a pandemic and being a first time homeowner is expensive– so we decided to live with the kitchen as-is for a year or two to really understand what we would want to change.
April 2022
At this point, I had already made the most of my consumer reports subscription, reading reviews and cross referencing them with the Yale Appliance Blog. Those guys are so incredibly helpful! With all of that knowledge I knew what I wanted, but I was waiting for a sale.
I’m minding my business attending a virtual tax conference while baking the cakes for my daughter’s birthday party, when one of the cakes comes out underbaked because the oven was wildly inconsistent. I had tried all of the tricks to recalibrate that thing, but it was on its very last leg. So when that cake was ruined, I was probably unreasonably upset but I embraced that feeling and ordered the Cafe French Door double oven. Did I measure anything? Nope. Did I check to see how long things were backordered? Nope. I had a discount through my employer and baker’s rage. So I ordered this oven and finished making those birthday cakes in the old oven.
Early May 2022
It turns out that the oven was backordered, just like everything else, giving me time to find a carpenter to come look at the cabinets to make space for this bigger oven. The funny thing is, a week after ordering the oven, I was in a zoom meeting with the Marketing team when a giant delivery truck parked in front of my house. Two delivery guys rang my doorbell ready to install the oven. Except they couldn’t because the space in the cabinetry wasn’t big enough. They parked the giant box in my garage and went on with their day.
So now we need a carpenter… and some painters, because obviously we should repaint the cabinets. This my friends, is the baker version of “If You Give A Mouse a Cookie”. If you Give A Baker a New Double Oven”.
Late May 2022
Should I Paint my cabinets white? UGH. Sorry to all of the people who love White Kitchen Cabinetry. We had white kitchen cabinets in one of our rentals, and I vividly remember being obsessed with wiping down cabinet fronts– all of the time. Grease on the upper cabinets near the microwave hood range and all of the lowers. Do you see how many cabinets we have? (#blessed) but I don’t want to spend my entire life wiping cabinets. Cabinets get dirty, but I really want a color that hides some of that until I get around to it.
Naturally, the comment about the grease from the range hood made me realize that now would also be a good time to update our hood vent. At this point we have a terrible downdraft gas cooktop situation– which basically means that the smoke and grease stay in our house. If we’re taking all of the cabinet fronts off to paint them– I figured we should find out what it would take to have a regular hood vent. We had a couple of contractors come out and quote us $5000 dollars. I was like wait what? The hood vent project clearly needed more research.
The Home Edit.
Memorial Day Weekend, I consume the entire concept of the Home Edit and apply it specifically to my kitchen pantry. I visited almost every Target and Home Goods In the Triangle Area collecting baskets and bins to bring some order to the chaos!
June 2022
Work gets really busy for me. Outside of slapping a few (or half dozen) Samplize Stickers on cabinets to see colors on the cabinets, not much gets done.
July 2022
The Canva Vision board starts to come to life. I've been following Julie Jones Design on Tik Tok and I love the way she uses her platform to educate her audience about creating a cohesive color palette in a design. So I started a design board in Canva. This board would eventually get updated 8 or 9 times. And my camera roll is full of pictures like this one:
As I was designing, I had two major limitations: 1) for now we’re keeping the 2009 era granite that screams “financial crisis boomer” and 2) the color of the floors. The red hardwood floor was SO hard to plan around.
Kitchen Cabinet Colors that I thought I would love, but hated in real life:
- BM Hale Navy. We actually painted our dining room this color and love it. But in that kitchen with the really red flooring, the purple/ gray undertones were too pronounced.
- SW Sea Salt. I love this color in theory. In my house, it’s a no.
- BM Van Deusen Blue. For a very long time, I thought this was going to be the one.
I wish I could tell you that I had some epiphany when it came to the color choice, but the reality is that my 7 year old picked the color. The girl has an eye for color. The color that we ended up choosing is SW Refuge. And a year later I LOVE IT.
Which cabinets to paint which color?
Initially the plan was to paint the lower cabinets a shade of blue and have the uppers be white– the tuxedo style. A day or two before the painters showed up, I changed my mind. (Is anyone surprised at this point?) At the last minute, I told the painters to paint all of the perimeter cabinets blue and the island white. The white paint was surprisingly easy to pick out– I got all of the white samples for the paint store and matched the paint to my subway tile backsplash, and that color is BM Chantilly Lace.
August 2022
August 2022 is when things really start moving, the oven finally gets installed! The cabinets get new paint and hardware and we install a new faucet! We also updated our dining room table with a couple of cool chairs and a new rug. I also repainted our existing barstools a dark gray.
September 2022
The new dining room light fixture arrives and I love the coastal vibe. After this we live with the kitchen -- I baked tons of cookies, and hosted co-workers for a holiday cookie exchange and we just enjoyed the space.
April 2023
We finally found someone to install a hood vent. Y’all this was the best news ever! Wahoo! I ordered a hood from Amazon and it was in the next day!
August 2023
A year later, I absolutely love the color that we picked and wouldn’t change that at all. The contractor that we used did a great job. I haven’t noticed any peeling or paint chips so far (fingers crossed). I do sort of regret the white island color choice, because the island is where I make most of my messes. The good news is that it’s pretty contained, so it is manageable. All in all I love the updates to the space, it really feels like a cool place to spend some time messing around.
I promised my family I’d take a year off before planning the next wave of updates. We’ll see how long that lasts. 😀
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