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Bruno & Alicia’s Kitchen Makeover, Part III: The Final Reveal

by on Aug 11, 2011

It’s Kitchen Month on Curbly! So Kelly, Melanie, and I will be doing a series of kitchen tours. We’ll walk you through our kitchens, point out what we love and what we don’t, and show how they got to be the way they are.

This week, I wrote about how our kitchen used to suck, and how we went through a tough DIY remodel to make it better. Today’s the kitchen tour! So without further ado … pretty pictures!Our remodeled kitchen

Fully furnished modular wooden kitchen .

We went with solid cherry cabinetry from Thomasville (through Home Depot). The drawer pulls we found online at Cool Knobs and Pulls.com (#8000 stainless steel bar pulls). Best thing about those drawers? The ‘soft close’ feature that makes them impossible to slam. They glide to a gentle stop like a figure skater.

We didn’t go for a matched set of appliances; we just looked for similiar stainless-steel surfaces. This saved us some money, and frankly, we didn’t care if all the logos didn’t match up. The microwave is from LG, the oven is a Whirlpool, the fridge is from Maytag, and the dishwasher is an awesome Siemens model that we got a deal on at the overstock appliance store. It’s ridiculously quiet and I love that it hides beneath the counter top (no exposed buttons). 

Our awesome Siemens dishwasher

Our beautiful hardwood floors ended up being free! Ok, we spent about $500 having them refinished, but they were right there under the old linoleum, and we didn’t have to bother putting new tile down (which was what we had been planning to do).

Hardwood floors

Hardwood has a warmth that nothing can match; we often find ourselves playing with Ayla on the floor of the kitchen, something we never would have done on tile or linoleum.

Our new fridge

We really wanted a fridge with french doors and a lower-mounted freezer. All the true stainless ones were pretty pricey, so we went with this Maytag model, which is ‘stainless-look’ (not really stainless). Actually, it works out great, because it means we can use magnets on it! We love it.

Our recipe book nook

Due to a fluke of dimensions, we ended up with a little space between these upper cabinets by the microwave. Spices wouldn’t work there (too short for the tall space; too much heat from the oven). After a sudden stroke of inspiration, we decided to turn it into a little bookshelf for cook books. Works a treat! 

A calendar can add some great color to a room. It's functional art!

There’s not much free wall space in the kitchen (that’s a good thing, I guess), so we use our monthly calendar to double as colorful art. When we’re done with the year’s calendar, we mount our favorite months in simple black frames on the opposing wall:

Four pictures of flowers on a wall with a cabinet on the right side.

(Last year’s calendar was from Snow & Graham, this year’s is from Paper Source).

Our pull-out spray head faucet

Our single-bowl stainless steel sink is from Elkay (also got that at Home Depot). We were kind of forced into this decision; the dimensions of the center cabinet meant that a double bowl sink wouldn’t fit (we could’ve made the cabinet wider, but then we’d have lost drawers on either side). We went with a single bowl somewhat reluctantly, but now we love it; you can fit everything (even our biggest pots) in there with ease. Only drawback: nowhere to leave a drying rack for dishes. But since we love our dishwasher so much, we rarely do them by hand, and it’s nice not having dish clutter out all the time anyway.

The faucet that Alicia is modeling there is from Delta; the magnetic pull out sprayer head is awesome, and it’s made of a ‘fingerprint proof’ stainless material (don’t ask how that works) that keeps very clean. 

Note: garbage disposal in the sink is an Insinkerator.  I know there’s some debate about the eco-friendliness of these nowadays, but still, it’s nice to have.

And now to some little details about our kitchen that we love:

OXO storage containers

Kitchen organization applliances which will be more useful.

These OXO air-tight food storage containers are a pantry’s best friend (Alicia has a whole post about his coming later this month).

"A Colorful Flowers in a vase"

Every kitchen needs flowers; these little guys are hanging out in a creamer, so there.

Stainless steel banana hanger on kitchen platform.

A banana hook: just get one already and stop eating brown bananas. This ones from ‘Spectrum Diversified’ on Amazon (yeah, I think that’s a funny name for a banana hook company too). The breadbox mostly tends to hold non-bread things (cookies, chocolate, etc.), but we still like it; keeps the clutter down. We got that one at Target.   

Our Rabbit wine bottle opener

Alicia insisted I include this one: our Rabbit wine bottle opener (wedding gift, yay!). Truly, it’s a breeze to use and gets a cork out of a stubborn bottle faster than you can snap your fingers. You can get one on Amazon for $50, or you can find someone to pretend to marry you and stage an elaborate ruse and ask a relative for one as a gift. Your call.

Remember this photo from yesterday’s post? 

Ayla at 5 months old.

Man, time flies. Here’s Ayla in the same spot, in the same chair. Now that’s a before & after you can’t beat…

Ayla loves her kitchen!

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