Kitchen remodeling is one of the biggest projects homeowners tackle. There are so many components and choices which, alternatively, can make your budget go out of hand. When approaching a kitchen project, consider the basics: layout, lighting, and flow. Let me break it down…

Layout

Where is your kitchen in comparison to the rest of the space? What physical shape does it take on? Do you have an open concept, an island, a peninsula or a closed room? Would you, your family and your kitchen activities benefit from changing that layout?

Our home had a combination of an elongated kitchen with a window into the dining / living room. We somewhat enjoyed that because it separated us from guests when we were hosting bigger parties but also kept us involved in whatever was going on.

Our kitchen window… imagine the possibilities if that right wall was down.

We wanted to change our layout to a peninsula; knock out the side of the window that opens into the living room. This could have created a greater feel of space, extended functionality of the countertop and is keeping up with the modern look of our time. But a huge part of working with already built homes is if your vision can actually be possible considering the structural support. Knocking that wall down wasn’t in our cards. That was a support wall; to restructure things internally would put us way over our budget and to do it externally (support beam look) doesn’t match the rest of the house. That was one of those moments we had to take a hit against our wishes.

Lighting

Such a huge point of focus that’s easily overlooked when approaching your kitchen design is your lighting. I’m not just talking about pendants or canned lights. I’m mostly talking about your windows and influx of natural light. Why is this important you ask? Well because natural lighting affects a lot during the daytime: food storage, fridge placements, island placements and if you’re like me, then it will affect your indoor plants & herbs placement.

Our house is a bit darker with most of the window placements in the kitchen. we also have an open pantry, which means stored food could be exposed to light. It was a huge win for us to replace our kitchen windows with a newer look and something that protects from damaging light-rays, provides better heat and cold insulation. We also decided against putting any blinds or curtains on two windows to brighten the place without any obstruction. We had to make a choice between that or canned lights and felt like the pros of windows outweighed the alternative.

New windows by the open pantry for more natural light.

Flow

My absolute favorite part of kitchen design. To me, this is the most crucial part... (duh cuz I obsess over design). The question this really answers is: how much does your kitchen look like it belongs in your house? There are so many factors that play in this, which is why you have to pay attention to layout and lighting. If you have an open or semi-open kitchen with clear visibility from multiple rooms in your house, you want to make sure everything plays well together. Otherwise, everything feels isolated and “choppy”.

So, this was my challenge: dark colored cabinets and stainless steel appliances. Um, I know 🙄. To start the flow process, we decided to continue the house flooring throughout the kitchen. We have visibility into the kitchen from the entryway, the dinning room, the hallway and the living room: all had a modern rustic feel / decor. To mimic this, I decided to sand down my cabinets using good ol’ medium-grit sanding paper. The results were phenomenal! It gave me the rustic look, the appliances were the modern look and the floor brought everything together. It also worked really well with our open pantry I had built a while back (DIY blog post coming soon). I think you’ll agree…

Kitchen Makeover