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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So what will the new kitchen layout look like? The new kitchen is going to become my command central for the house. From the spot where the sink is in the picture above I will have a view of both the front and back doors and all main living areas of the house. Just call me Master & Commander (of the house).
Cabinets will span the entire wall of the kitchen with the sink and refrigerator remaining in the same place. In front of the cabinets will be a nine foot long island with seating for six people The island area will be our main seating area in the kitchen vs. the traditional stand alone table with chairs that would have been used in the previous layout.
Remember this was the wall that had the stove on it.
