Kitchen Remodel Stage 1

Hello friends! Today I’m excited to say that for the next couple of weeks my home will be in somewhat of a beautiful chaos. I’m hoping our kitchen remodeling project will be done under a month’s time and yes, that includes work to be done during Thanksgiving week.

As I mentioned in my first post our remodeling project will not undertake any real construction. We originally built our house and the kitchen layout is still a great working triangle. I love its flow and it fits my needs perfectly. It also helps keep us within a budget. We will however strip it down to its core allowing us to give it a brand new facelift.

We reserved the bigger portion of our budget for high end cabinetry, appliances and natural stones. For a little while Vin and I couldn’t agree on the type of stone for the countertops, I wanted marble and he wanted granite. But having a busy family of six equals a high traffic kitchen and that’s not an easy task to undertake especially when marble requires high maintenance.

As one of the leading realtor brokers in CT (if you’re curious to know more about him you can check him out here) Vin comes across many gorgeous homes all the time. One day he took me to see a beautiful new construction that featured an amazing kitchen design. It was dressed with this beautiful granite and when I saw it I immediately loved it! (Note to self, it really makes a difference when you see a whole kitchen set up versus trying to choose stone from a small sample piece.) I’m happy to report we both agreed on the pretty ‘Viscon White’ granite.

A hard hat moment and visit to Mass. for the stone. Based on our square footage we picked two of these giant slabs.Our contractor then sent us to Tile America to select our backsplash. They were incredibly helpful and they took all the time needed to help us narrow down what we really wanted. We chose ‘honed Gramercy marble’ subway tiles, part of the Carrara marble family for the backsplash.

The term ‘honed’ means it has an ever so light polish to it. I liked it right away because it’s a nice contrast to the granite’s super shiny surface. I particularly love the beautiful subtle veins of Gramercy. I didn’t want a busy backsplash to compete with the granite’s design but I didn’t want an all white either. The Gramercy tiles compliments the granite really well, a definite win win!week one; demolition & removal of old cabinetryremoval of old plumbing and backsplash and replace with drywall for new backsplashinstall new flooring in bare spots, install lower cabinetry, reposition electrical wiring and plumbing and make templates for countertopsMy Friday morning view, cheers to the weekend!

The countertop templates have been measured and sent to the stone shop for cutting, the appliances have been ordered and are ready to be delivered as soon as the countertops are installed, which hopefully will be within the next week or two with the sinks as well. The faucets are here and sitting pretty waiting for install.

Over the weekend I’ll be shopping for the island microwave, cabinetry hardware and a new blower for the custom hood above the range. The one thing I haven’t decided on is whether to leave the lighting as is. I think it would depend on the aesthetics of the overall finished project. I may wait till the kitchen is finished to decide…

Our kitchen remodel project is well underway and I can’t wait to see it unfold in the next week or two. As you can see we’ve already done a lot in just one week but we still have much more to do! In the mean time you can catch sneak peeks of our project on Snapchat (@rmd0610).  Stay tuned for more details of our progress coming in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for stopping by and have a fabulous weekend!