Renov8or: Renovation Diary: Kitchen Reveal—With Before and After Photos

If you've been following our renovation, you know that we've been in the home stretch for some time, waiting on the lighting over the sink run and peninsula and the remaining doors that had to be reordered to measure after some field fitting around the wall oven, above the fridge, and to the right of the pantries. Well, it's all in now. Let's have a look!

The slab marble backsplash is all that I dreamed it would be. I picked out adjacent slabs and had the fabricator bookmatch them. The simple backdrop of stark white shaker cabinets proved to be very effective—the plain setting that by contrast lets the diamond shine.

I'm just a tiny bit enamored with it. Ross has been calling it "My Precious." (Do we have enough "Ring" metaphors?)

On the sink run wall, I decided on having no wall cabinets. I didn't want to block the line of sight to the window. The brass picture rail was a last-minute addition—it's always great to have a place to display art.

The decision to go with IKEA boxes with custom solid wood doors paid off. I love the internal organizers in the IKEA bases. Like this "hidden" drawer that I'm using for spices. It's so easy while cooking to just reach down and find at a glance the spice that I need.

One for flatware.

And two more located in the pull-out that houses our recycling station.

The walls separating the old galley kitchen from the dining area have come down. It lets in so much light.

The platform is all kitchen now.

We annexed the old foyer to be the new dining area. I pulled the two rooms together with this floating marble-topped sideboard using the same IKEA bases as the kitchen. Just as with the kitchen, the shaker doors are custom, solid maple—and there is nothing "faux" about this marble-topped credenza.

Materials:

Flooring: Contractor restored and integrated new planks where needed.
Sektion cabinet boxes, Variera internal organizers, and Nutid integrated wall microwave: IKEA
Solid maple doors: Scherr’s
Cabinet paint in Extra White, SW #7006: Sherwin Williams
White edge cabinet pulls, #9898: Richelieu
Integrated refrigerator, HC #2080: Liebherr
Masterpiece gas cooktop, #SGSX365FS: Thermador
Pull-out range hood, #CRIS36SS600: Faber
Riverby 27” sink: Kohler
Trinsic kitchen faucet: Delta
Continental water filtration faucet, #KS8198CTL: Kingston Brass
30” electric wall oven, #VEBIEM301SS: Verona
Undercounter freezer drawers, #SCFF532D: Summit Appliance
Quartz countertops in Pure White, #1141: Caesarstone
Italian Poannazzo marble backsplash: BAS Stone NYC
Backsplash fabricator: ABF Marble
Wall paint in Blackened, #2011: Farrow and Ball
Boldmfg brass picture shelf; LongMadeCo cylinder drop spot mid-century minimal wall light: Etsy

If you're now wondering what the kitchen looked like before, I went through old photos and rounded up a good selection. But first, I'll remind you of my mood board and plans...

Before Photos

The kitchen was, and remains, on a raised platform—which was a common architectural detail in mid-century homes in this area of New York. The kitchen was a small galley-style, also common to the era. And adjacent was this dramatic raised dining platform.

I really liked the way the dining platform looked, however the kitchen, even after a modest $3,000 (mostly white paint) refresh, was not at all functional.

The aisle was, and remains, exceedingly narrow. If you opened the dishwasher, it blocked the fridge.

If you opened the oven to, say, take out your Thanksgiving turkey, you'd have to take it out from the side because there was no room to stand in front of the range with the door open.

When we moved in, I gave it a facelift by painting the cabinets white and adding an upper row of stacked cabinets and a subway tile backsplash.

Aesthetically, it got me through while we decided what to do about this kitchen.

Five years is a long time to think about a project, so by the time we pulled the trigger on this renovation I had a good idea of what we needed to do.

My plan was to open up the walls and spread out, so that everything on the raised platform would be "kitchen."

This would give us space to move the refrigerator and pantry out into the open, where anyone could grab a drink or snack while someone's cooking.

I moved the cooking station to the back wall and positioned wall ovens in an area where I could stand in front when removing baked food.

And I made sure the sink wasn't back-to-back with the range or other prep space, so two people could cook together.

The dining area was moved to what had been our foyer—a charming but underutilized space.

Before "the Befores"

I think I've given you a good idea of how the place looked before we kicked off the renovation. But to truly see how far we've come, here are a few before the "befores" — photos from the real estate listing before we purchased the house.