Ottawa interior decorator: The real & official kitchen makeover post

If you’ve been following DesignTies for a while, you might remember my Weeehooo!!!! Time for a new kitchen!!! post from last May. Yes, last May — almost 10 months ago. And you might have noticed that there hasn’t been a “Here’s my new kitchen!!!” post since then. Well kids, the time has finally arrived… after ripping out tiles & drywall, drilling holes in the ceiling, big-time countertop aggravation, a fresh coat of paint on all the trim, two coats of paint on the cabinet boxes, four coats of paint on the walls, and transporting 50 cabinet doors and drawers to and from the painter in a smart car, our kitchen is done. Well, 99% done. But who knows how long that last 1% will take, so here it is… our kitchen makeover!!

This is what we started off with:

There was nothing really wrong with the kitchen structurally. The cabinets are solid wood, the layout is functional, the appliances are all relatively new and work fine… it was all the stinky pink that I couldn’t stand. Not to mention the laminate countertops had bubbled up along the seams in a crock pot incident.

It took eight years to convince hubby to get rid of all the pink. But once we finally got started, there was no turning back!!

First we selected the granite for the countertop — Brown Cabernet.

We selected our slabs in May, but we weren’t ready for the templating till August, which is when the sink arrived. And we had to so some demo — no major demo, but hubby decided the best way to remove the backsplash tiles was to take down the upper cabinets and actually cut out the drywall along with the tiles. Even the walls behind the cabinets were pink!! Seriously. Here’s proof:

We also had to remove all the window trim. At this point, I decided I liked our kitchen better without the upper cabinets. But hubby was like, uh, yeah, right — NOT HAPPENING!! But, I did manage to convince him to replace the window sill with casing. A small detail, but that extra inch or two of room behind the sink makes a big difference.

So now we have freshly drywalled walls and a granite composite sink from Kindred in Havana (the colour, not the city in Cuba!!).

We decided to install pendant lights above the peninsula. I wanted pendants with copper shades that cost $150 each. Hubby found pendants with swirly red glass shades at Home Depot for $30 each. Guess who won this stand-off…

But actually, these pendants add great colour to the kitchen. Plus hubby’s the one who had to go up into the attic to drill the holes and install the junction box, so I had to humour him ;-)

Hubby wanted to widen the peninsula and create an eating area on the counter, so he built a bank of cabinets along the eating area side:

Now we’re ready for the countertop. Oh, the countertop. The %$#^#$!% countertop!! We waited for the granite. And waited. And waited. And… you get the point. Almost two months after the templating was done, the countertops finally went in. Beautiful stone, but shitty workmanship on the install. Unpolished edges, uneven seams, and the faucet wasn’t centered. Not to mention the granite wasn’t sealed. Trust me when I say DO NOT DEAL WITH CLASSIC TILE & MARBLE IN OTTAWA. Unless you like delays, inferior workmanship, and general all-around BS. But that’s a post for another day — this is a positive and happy “Yay, my kitchen is finished!!” post :-)

Upper cabinets back in place and countertop, sink, and faucet installation done:

 

Next came the uber-fantabulous mother-of-pearl backsplash tiles from Mirage Glass Tiles that the uber-fantabulous Paul at Kitchen and Residential Design recommended. LOVE THEM. They are absolutely stunning and gorgeous. Paul is a genius!!!

So that’s what we did on my birthday — the big backsplash install :-) Happy Birthday to me!! At some point, I painted all the trim in BM Cloud White. And then I painted the walls Sherwin Williams Balanced Beige — another great suggestion from Paul :-)

I had painted the switch plate covers in the kitchen copper years ago. They didn’t quite work with the brown tiles, so I pulled out a can of oil rubbed bronze spray paint, and voila, brand new (looking) switch plate covers :-)

Now we had to agree on a paint colour for the cabinets. I wanted dark, he wanted white. We sort of met in the middle, although I think he got a colour closer to what he wanted. That being said, I do love the colour we decided on — Benjamin Moore Edgecomb Grey.

So the week before Christmas, we took down all the doors and I brought them to RLD Industries to be painted. Unfortunately, they had a big job to do for the military and then they were closed over the holidays. They said they’d try to have the doors ready by the end of the first or second week of January. So this is what our kitchen looked like for three weeks:

As you can see, the cabinet bodies are no loner pink. YAY!! I painted them over the Christmas holidays. I also painted the big coffin light fixture on the ceiling Cloud White to make it disappear as much as possible.

Unlike our crappy granite experience, our RLD experience was awesome — the doors and drawers were ready at the end of the first week of January. Yahoo!! And the quality is fantastic. No way could we have painted them as well ourselves.

We kept the brushed copper door hardware, which saved us a couple of hundred dollars. I’d already convinced hubby to replace the original cabinet hardware with these copper handles about 8 years ago, and he wasn’t going for replacing them again!!

Once all the doors were hung, I realized there wasn’t enough contrast between the cabinet colour and the wall colour. UGH!!! I ended up repainting the walls a darker version of Balanced Beige — somewhere between Tony Taupe and Virtual Taupe.

So now that I’ve teased you with all these “in progress” shots, here it is… our finished kitchen (minus the artwork and the stools that hubby is making). Just to remind you what it looked like before…

…and during…

Here it is, the after!!

Here’s a tour around the room, starting with the window wall…

Moving along to the peninsula…

Looking from the peninsula towards the patio doors. The curtains are custom-made — I love the look of the horizontal stripes :-)

And to the wall opposite the window wall…

Here’s a close-up of the niche:

And a few more random shots…

    

Whew!! I know it’s a long post, but just think — it took a lot less time to read about the makeover than it took to DO the makeover!! ;-)

Thanks again to Paul, and also to Susan at Moving Designz for re-affirming our Edgecomb Grey selection. And thanks to all our readers who commented on my previous kitchen posts with their thoughts and suggestions :-)

And finally, no makeover is complete until it’s part of Metamorphosis Monday over at Between Naps on the Porch!! If I haven’t tired you out with my kitchen makeover, head over to BNOTP to check out what other makeovers people have been up to lately (or over the past year!!) The Met Monday blog party starts at about 8:00 tonight…

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