Category Archives: Color

Command Central… The Kitchen

It’s been exactly one year since we first bought Whistle Haven.

One year since our vision of our family home began taking shape. Whistle Haven was a foreclosure that had been on off the market for a while. A house with great bones but in need of some TLC. One walk through that parquet laden house with an outdated kitchen, an oddly laid out master bath, and popcorn ceilings galore and we knew this was where we wanted to live. One year including six months of construction later and I’m incredibly grateful that God has allowed us to call this place home.

Last March we returned from China with Judah and moved into Whistle Haven just six days later. Looking back we aren’t sure how we managed such a feat and an even bigger feat of unpacking everything as we struggled to help Judah adjust to his new life at the same time. At the time we had one working toilet and sink and no kitchen. We hooked up the old refrigerator and microwave in the garage and that was life for us for a while.

Crazy right?

The answer is yes! But we did it! And it was so worth it because now our kitchen is one of our favorite areas of the house. So before we get to all the pictures of the new kitchen let’s go back and look at what the kitchen originally looked like and how the floor plan has changed.

We ended up tearing all the cabinets out, saving the existing granite, and developed an entirely new much more efficient use of the floor plan for us. You can see the original layout of the kitchen in the floor plan below.

Before:

And then how we really increased the size of the kitchen just by opening up some walls, getting rid of the peninsula, and moving all the appliances to one wall and designing a large island as the main focal point of the kitchen.

After:

You may remember from a post earlier last year that in an effort to save some major money we designed the kitchen layout ourselves using the IKEA design website. I helped with the overall design and selected the Bodbyn cabinet but Michael Luke did all the nitty gritty stuff like quadruple checking to make sure that ALL our measurements lined up and then each cabinet and drawer would function best in its placement. We put an incredibly large amount of thought and time into how we wanted the kitchen to look but in the end it was totally worth it.

When I envisioned our kitchen I knew I wanted it to be the center hub of the house. The place where everyone gathered as I prepared meals. Where friends could relax and make themselves at home. A place we could entertain large groups of people easily.

One year and countless meals later I would say we achieved that dream.

I can’t say taking the cabinets to the ceiling was Michael Luke’s or our contractor’s favorite part but I absolutely love how they create the illusion of higher than 7′ ceilings. When your working with a house that is approaching being 50 years old you can’t exactly expect the ceiling to be level. So getting the trim to look uniform while at the same time filling in any discrepancies in height was certainly a challenge. Just by extending the cabinets to the ceiling we created lots of extra storage.

The island is the focal point of the kitchen and the main gathering place for our house. With sitting for eight it’s the perfect spot to feed the girls and all their friends, create masterful Play-Doh creations, spread out their school work, or for adults to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee. When possible we try to keep things child friendly and able to withstand lost of use… because we plan to do lots of entertaining here at Whistle Haven. That’s one of the reasons why we chose the Raskog bar stools from IKEA. These metal stools are comfortable and at $35 each we went ahead and bought two extra that we can pull out if we need even more seating.

The island is visually asymmetrical… another design feature that I struggled with. I truly had a hard time envisioning and feeling confident that it wouldn’t look strange for bar stools to wrap around one end of the bar. Now that the island is installed it’s easy to see that it works and that the visual symmetrical weight of the island top brings everything together.

The acanthus and clear dome glass pendants are from Shades of Light but are no longer available. These three lights alone probably stressed me out more than anything else in the kitchen. I went back and forth on how many we should have installed, whether I wanted clear glass, and how big the pendants should be. In the end I am extremely pleased with them and feel like they enjoy being front and center in the kitchen. The lighting in general was a design challenge but I believe we got it right by adding ten recessed lights, three pendant lights over the island, under cabinet lights, and a glass pendant above the sink.

I’ve already mentioned that the island is the focal point of the kitchen. Something that makes it extra special is that it is built from Southern Yellow Pine and came from my family’s sawmill, Hankins Inc. We reused the existing granite on the counters in our kitchen so from the beginning I knew I wanted something different on the island. As we were working on our house I thought it would be fun to integrate some of my family’s lumber into the renovation. I’ve seen distressed pieces used as headers above wall openings but I didn’t really feel like that would go with the style of our house.

Scolling through Pinterest one night I noticed some wood counters. I didn’t want exposed wood, or wood with a thin coat of sealer though. From those pictures came the inspiration for our island. I wanted something durable. That’s where the idea came to use a marine grade finish. The finish our on our island is probably somewhere between 1/8″ and 1/4″ deep. It turned out beautiful and is holding up well.

The back side of the island houses our microwave and pullout drawers for storage. The black stool serves dual purposes. It mainly works as one of our eight seats at the bar but also as my step stool to reach any items above two shelves up in my cabinet. At 4’10” all that extra space is useless without a step stool. I love that this one is always readily available for when I need it.

Ok, let’s talk appliances for a minute. All our appliances except for the vent hood are Samsung. The vent hood is from IKEA. We had a Samsung refrigerator in Birmingham and were pleased with it so we chose the same brand here. No big news… but some of the appliances do have some cool features.

Like the oven. From the outside it looks like a single oven but on the inside…

it can function as a double or single oven. If you look about a third of the way down on the inside of the oven you can see a metal shelf that slides in and out creating a single or double oven. I had a double oven with two doors in Birmingham and loved it because of how quickly the small upper oven can heat up. We knew we wanted another one because of what a time and cost saver they can be.

The new layout of the kitchen caused the oven and dishwasher to be side by side. I didn’t want to visually see two appliances directly beside each other. So we chose a dishwasher that can be covered with a cabinet panel letting it blend in with the rest of the cabinets. In the picture above the dishwasher is directly to the right of the oven. I like that it is conveniently hidden but most of all I love how quiet it is. I know quiet dishwashers have been out for a while now but previously we would have to avoid using our washer during family times because it was so loud. Now, I have to double check just to make sure the thing is running.

Running quietly will certainly be a top priority whenever it’s time to replace our washer and dryer!

Tucked over on the left of our kitchen is our work horse storage area. I’m talking about the space that corals everyone’s junk and keeps the counters from getting bogged down with stuff. I owe you some inside shots of it… I promise. For now, let me just tell you about them.

The lower cabinet to the far left is Michael Luke’s… minus the 40 lb box of sweet potatoes I have stored at the bottom. Inside he keeps his snacks for work, computer, and all the mail.

The middle lower cabinet is for the kids. They have hooks for each of their backpacks and other gear.

The lower and upper cabinet on the right is our pantry with pull out drawers for all our canned and dry goods.

Finally, the upper left and middle cabinets store our family games, Play-doh, and puzzles. This keeps them out of reach of little hands but easily accessible for me to grab for them to play with in the kitchen.

So that pretty much sums up our kitchen and one of my favorite transformed rooms here at Whistle Haven. As Judah has slowly gotten adjusted to life here with us we have had several opportunities to entertain, host a birthday party, and even a dinner party for 30+ comfortably. Our house isn’t extremely large but we purposely set it up in a way that we can accommodate large crowds. Hopefully 2018 will bring us abundantly more opportunities to open our home to others.

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3 Tips for Selecting Kitchen Cabinets

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Do you ever find yourself scrolling through your Pinterest feed pinning inspiration pictures that you like left and right? Many of them don’t have anything in common but yes, that pic of gorgeous pendants is amazing…

and if you were designing your dream kitchen you would have to have a hidden dry erase board in it.

On Pinterest it’s fun to dream that you CAN HAVE IT ALL. Pinning and dreaming are free and your boards have all the space in the world to build your dreams.

But what happens when it’s time to take a good look at your Pinterest board actually make these dreams come to life? Within your budget, your square footage, and without looking like a hodgepodge of individual good ideas. You may find yourself feeling much like how Esther does about selecting a theme for her sixth birthday party… overwhelmed.

Use these 3 Tips for Selecting Kitchen Cabinets to help avoid that feeling.

Think Long Term

Cabinetry and flooring are two of the harder and more expensive finishes to replace in a house. So just like we did with our flooring we wanted to select a cabinet style and finish that wouldn’t date itself in five years or that might not be great for resale value. So while I do love colorful kitchens like this one…

I plan to bright spots of color in barstools, flowers, and artwork like this kitchen.

But you know if yellow is your favorite color and it has been for twenty years and your pretty sure it will be for twenty mores years go ahead and use yellow cabinets.

For this reason I also stayed away from selecting gray cabinets.

I love them but grays have so many different undertones like red, blue, and green that i didn’t want to be restrained to using only accent colors that worked with the undertone of the gray. I do however love gray cabinets and still think it looks beautiful in our townhouse kitchen.

Think Cohesively

One of the biggest things to keep in mind is making sure the style and color of your finish work with everything else you have selected for the kitchen. I knew from the beginning that I wanted a white subway tile backsplash like in our townhouse kitchen. It adds a clean and classic look to any kitchen and is also inexpensive. You may remember from one of our earlier posts that we are reusing the black granite counters that were in the kitchen.

These counters are really what the entire kitchen design revolves around.

So while I love the white on white on white look…

I needed to know how white cabinets and a white subway tile backsplash looked with black granite.

I liked what I saw. So now the decision remained… which type of cabinets to use.

Think Budget Wise

We have a set budget for the entire Whistle Haven project. After working five years as an interior designer in healthcare design I learned a thing or two about making spaces look beautiful on a budget. It’s easy to create a beautiful space with endless amounts of money but good design happens when you stick to and work within a budget AND create a beautiful space at the same time. That’s been my goal with Whistle Haven.

So while we could afford to have custom cabinets made and installed I really felt like we would have missed out on some of the bells and whistles that I wanted in our kitchen. Like soft-closing cabinets, huge pull-out drawers, and under cabinet lighting. Michael Luke and I are also a couple that loves tackling a good DIY project. After reading several reviews on the quality of their modular cabinets and with the opening of their store here in Memphis in December we just couldn’t resist going with IKEA cabinets.

We chose the Bodbyn style in off-white… which really reads more as a white. I’m absolutely in love with the detailing on the doors and look forward to seeing my kitchen surrounded by beautiful white cabinets. IKEA offers so many options that there are virtually limitless ways you can customize your kitchen design to fit your lifestyle. If you haven’t ever visited an IKEA showroom before you are really missing out on all the fun of walking through living space after living space and testing out all the drawers and doors and finding neat storage solutions hidden within.

All the parts to our kitchen cabinets were delivered almost two weeks ago and are waiting on ML and me to tackle them once our flooring gets installed. By choosing IKEA cabinets with their 25 year warranty… which we are really excited about, we are saving thousands of dollars vs. custom and semi-custom cabinets from other brands! Plus, I get all the bells and whistles I wanted with my cabinets.

I promise another post soon with all the details on how we designed on our IKEA kitchen and what the whole process looks like from the first sketches to cabinet delivery. In the meantime, what is your one board that you pin the most to?

For me it’s my crochet board. I’m always looking for cute crochet patterns and stylish ways to incorporate crochet into my home design.

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Champagne It Is

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Once we got the floor busted up we realized that it was time to make a decision on flooring. I’m normally a pretty quick decision maker. ML is one of those people who like to exhaust all their resources and not make any decisions until he has done thorough research. So we make quite a combo. I do the initial sample pulling, pinning of ideas, and share my ideas with him and then he challenges me to keep going while he gathers all the technical information and pricing details. Normally by the end of this process it’s usually pretty evident what our best choice is. With our flooring it really wasn’t any different.

So let’s talk about it.

The first decision we had to make was what type of flooring did we want to use throughout the downstairs. With soon to be three kids, two pets, and hopefully lots of friends in the house we knew it needed to be durable and practical. Before I dive into the three types of flooring we considered let me just share that as popular and practical as ceramic “wood” tile is it just isn’t for us. I don’t know why and I can’t explain it but my feet are very picky about the type of flooring they walk on barefooted and cold, gritty ceramic tile just isn’t one of them. Plus, since we live so close to the train tracks I really want a floor that will work to absorb some of the sound.

Originally we through we wanted hardwood flooring because it could be sanded and refinished down the road if we ever wanted to change the stain color. The more we looked at our options the more we realized this might not be the best choice.

For one thing laminate and engineered flooring was sometimes half the cost. Meaning that later down the road if we ever wanted to change flooring it would be just as affordable to replace it. Laminate flooring has really come in a long way and in terms of durability it is probably one of the best choices of the three types of flooring.

It’s also a great way to get the look of expensive flooring for a fraction of the cost. I mean look at some of these beautiful options available. It was certainly enticing but in the end we ended up choosing engineered hardwood flooring.

Engineered hardwood is made of a core of hardwood or plywood with a layer of hardwood veneer affixed to the top surface. It’s more resistant to moisture and heat compared to solid hardwood. Since it’s actually made of wood it sounds like wood when you walk on it instead of the sometimes hollow sound you get when you walk on laminate flooring. Since less hardwood is used in the construction of each flooring plank the cost of the material is less. Once again broadening our choices of flooring to choose from because some of those expensive hardwoods get on up there in price!

The hardest part wasn’t choosing the type of flooring though it was choosing the type of wood, finish, and stain that we wanted in our flooring.

So if you’ve been on Pinterest any at all lately you may have noticed that gray floors are the flooring to have right now.

They are absolutely beautiful but flooring is not as easy to swap out as paint or pillows on the sofa. Flooring selection is a long-term commitment and as beautiful as the gray flooring we didn’t want to choose something trendy that we might regret five or ten years down the road. So gray flooring was out.

Our initial serious favorite was a flooring with a dark almost chocolate/coffee stain.

This beautiful dark flooring really contrasts with white trim and cabinets and gives off a subtle clean and contemporary feeling. It’s as if it’s saying, “I’m stylish and know what i’m doing here. I’m bold and beautiful!” But then I talked to my sister who is in her second house with dark flooring and she shared with me how hard it is to keep looking clean and that the dark flooring shows every little pieces of dirt. Ok, remember the part of the story where I’m a mom to almost three kids and two pets. I’m also a mom who is NOT good at cleaning and certainly not used to cleaning the floor daily. So the chocolate/coffee flooring was out.

Before I move onto where we actually landed with our flooring choice let me just say that for some reason I didn’t want a super light or yellow finish flooring. So the typical look of the lighter oak flooring wasn’t really something we considered.

To help us nail down a flooring stain finish we turned to our fire place. The brick in it has some beautiful reds and blues that we wanted the flooring to pull from. We laid out samples against the fireplace and finally began to narrow down the stain color for the floor.

We chose the second flooring from the left. It is a medium color wood finish with hints of red in it that highlights the natural grain of the wood. And you know… I has totally won me over and I get the feeling I’m going to love it more than the dark chocolate flooring that first caught my eye.

We pulled sample pieces from several vendors here in the Memphis area before finally deciding but in the end chose the Mullican Lincolnshire Hickory Champagne. I can already envision the planks bringing a feeling of warmth to the rooms. We are crazy about the slight color variations throughout the flooring. From the beginning we were pretty sold on using hickory. It’s one of the harder woods used for flooring meaning that it won’t scratch as easily as birch, walnut, or oak. Because we want the floor to be durable and because we love the look we chose a hand scraped finish with some distressing.

I love the look of distressed flooring because my vision is to have a wood flooring that looks like it could have been there since the house was built in 1979. Of course the 5″ wide planks may give away the fact that it hasn’t been but don’t you just love the look of wide planks?

So there you have it. That’s all the thinking that went behind our flooring choice. Well really not all the thinking because I left the more boring parts out. But if you are considering including engineered flooring in your home renovation project or in your new home take some time and research the wear layer on top of the wood finish, the thickness of the wood veneer, the warranty on the product you are looking at, and if your flooring choice can be re-sanded and finished in the future.

Our hickory flooring will run throughout the downstairs except for the laundry room and half bath off of the kitchen and in our master bathroom.

So as we keep moving forward in our decision making process of selecting finishes, how do you choose to incorporate trendy fashions in your house? Interchangeable artwork, pillows, bold colors on the walls?

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