A Tour of My Kitchen

Hi, everyone!  I recently realized that I haven’t given you all a complete tour of our kitchen since we made some small changes in it last summer.  We showed you the upgrades separately, but we didn’t put together a proper kitchen tour post for you.  So, before I add Christmas decorations, I thought it might be nice to take a look around.  After all, you probably need a break from all things Christmas now and then.

 

Let me give you a little background first.  We moved into our townhouse four years ago, but before we did, we completely gutted it and worked with an architect to redesign it and then had it remodeled.  Although I love/loved our kitchen after the remodel, there were some areas that just didn’t seem right to me.  The room was wonderful with its white cabinets, Carrera marble counter tops, and hardwood floors, but it felt flat to me.  One of the areas that I did not like was this corner of the room where we installed a kitchen hutch.  It bothered me from day one.  At the suggestion of my friend Debra Huppman who is a top kitchen designer, we removed the top of the hutch and moved it into our pantry.

 

 

Turning this spot into a buffet, rather than a hutch, made a huge difference in the way the room looks and the way I feel about it.

 

 

The photo of our copper pot storage was featured by several magazines on-line and by Canadian House and Home magazine.

 

 

(before the hutch became a buffet)

This is what the area looked like before.

 

 

 

This area had all wooden doors, and we took the glass doors from the hutch and moved them here.

 

 

We also painted the interior of this cabinet gray to match the peninsula and added glass shelves and interior cabinet lights and under-counter lights.

 

 

This wall beside the peninsula needed to be a point of interest, and so we added rustic wooden shelves, and I love them.  It’s my favorite change to the room.  It’s a great spot to put seasonal decorations, and the shelves add some much needed texture to the room.  They also play off of the old demi-john lamps on the buffet.

 

 

Here’s another view of the shelves.  The gray peninsula has a white glaze that softens it.  The area on the right is the opening into the great room.  I have a white antique screen that can be opened to provide privacy when we are entertaining.  On the left are the French doors that lead to the sun room.

 

 

 

The wood on the shelves is over 150 years old and came from an old stage coach inn.

 

 

I still have the helpful book shelves in the peninsula for cookbook storage.

 

And the wine racks in the peninsula provide a wonderful place to store the vino.

 

 

The marble counter tops are high maintenance, but I love the look.

 

A bathroom towel bar is a perfect way to hang tea towels at the end of a cabinet.

 

Our kitchen gets a lot of light from a set of French doors that open onto the solarium (sun room.)

 

I added a great rug that I won in an auction from Everything But The House.

 

 

It has rich colors and texture.  It is old and colorful and loaded with character.  This one rug pretty much sums up my decorating style.

 

 

I added this contemporary hardware.  I wanted something completely different from the rest of the room, and these pulls are just right.  I love them.

 

 

My red pantry door is still a show-stopper.  It adds a lot of pop to the room.

 

 

This is where the top of the hutch ended up.  We removed the doors and added it to the pantry, and it is great in there.

 

(kitchen when we bought house)

This is the “way before” of the kitchen as in the way it looked when we bought the place.  We knocked out a wall among other things.

 

I am flying to Jordan’s today for a long week-end.  I am so excited.  Yankee is on a big business trip, and Jordan and I are going to spend time doing some more painting, hopefully on Little Miss’s room.   Then we are driving back together to Lexington on to spend some time together on my turf.

 

Take care.