Kitchens are one of my favorite spots in the house to renovate. I always see the kitchen like the heart of a house – a place where the family gathers – a neutral ground. Having a beautiful large space to prepare and enjoy food supports a healthy relationship between cooking and eating. So I’m happy to bring you through the before and after renovation of a kitchen in Great Falls, Virginia

Getting Started

If you’ve been following our blogs for a while, you’ll know that our favorite way to go about renovations is starting completely fresh. So we gutted the entire existing kitchen, which means that everything in this renovation is completely bespoke and custom made. Looking at the raw space, you can see that it’s a fairly large space – nothing too extravagant, but also not too small by any means. The space has large windows that let in beautiful natural daylight, and I knew that I wanted this design to accentuate that. Having a completely gutted room is like having a blank canvas. The possibilities are endless and your imagination is free to run wild. Which is what we did.

Planning The Design

The first step in any design process will be planning. We knew that we wanted the kitchen to follow a neutral color palette, and we also wanted it to feature marble. Thankfully we found two different types of marble. The first one was very veiny marble that features a lot of sandy, gray, and white tones. This marble would eventually become the kitchen island. As for the rest of the countertops, we went with a more subdued marble that was less veiny. It was perfect for what we had in mind. After we chose which marble to use, we could plan the rest of the design around that. 

Custom Cabinets 

The first thing we tackled were the custom cabinets. We started by installing the hanging cabinets along the walls first. Afterwards we installed the lower cabinets, the kitchen island, and the pantry. All of the cabinetry had to be installed around where the kitchen appliances would eventually go. The island was built in different segments before being topped with marble. When designing the island, we made sure to build in shelves, drawers, and cupboard space for extra storage. It is so extremely important that a kitchen is designed to be practical and functional because everyone in the family spends so much time in the kitchen.

To provide contrast, we went with two different colors of paint/stain for all the custom cabinetry. For all of the cabinetry along the walls, we opted for a pale gray stain color. As previously stated, we wanted to accentuate the natural light from the window, so featuring plenty of this light color would really help brighten the room up. We decided to introduce contrast in order to balance the design. We did this by choosing a darker gray/green stain for the island. I love the way it turned out.

Lighting & Appliances

Next on our list were all the kitchen appliances. We installed the sinks, stove, oven, and other appliances. The vent-a-hood above the stove is a stainless custom design. We installed the marble backsplash and the custom-designed marble piece above the stove to offer some texture for the eye to land on. Finally, we installed beautifully polished nickel lanterns hanging over the island from Vaughan Designs. We attached polished nickel hardware to all the cabinetry, then put the bespoke custom-made barstools around the island and the design was nearly complete! All that was left to do was decorate the countertop with beautiful vintage English Ironstone pieces. 

More where this came from…

I absolutely love how this design turned out and my client loved it just as much. It feels modern, clean, chic, and welcoming! If you are debating whether or not to renovate, check out our article on the perks of a kitchen renovation to help you decide!