Here we are, friends – the halfway point to our six week kitchen refresh project for the One Room Challenge.
Today, we are going to chat about appliances, our sink and faucet, and hardware. I was planning to share all about our new countertops but we ran into a bit of a hiccup when they arrived and I noticed from the window that they were cut with the wrong edge. What a bummer!
We purchased a new refrigerator when we bought our house three years ago so we are planning to keep it but are replacing all of our other appliances in the kitchen. For the range, we chose to upgrade it for aesthetic purposes entirely so we sold our old one.
We decided to upgrade our dishwasher because it just did a terrible job. I don’t really care to spend extra time on the dishes (I mean, who does?!) so I want to be able to just rinse them and put them in the dishwasher feeling confident they will come out clean. Isn’t that the purpose of a dishwasher, after all? Well, our old one has been more of a dish-rinser because it did not clean the dishes well at all!
And let’s not forget about that over the range microwave that hasn’t worked in months. It’s been purely decorative for awhile now.
Now, before we dig right in, lets pause for a moment to see the kitchen progress so far. Still lots to do.
When choosing appliances this time I over analyzed everything. I wanted looks and function and knowing that these might be the only ones we ever purchase for this house (hopefully!), I researched the possibilities until my eyes felt strained from reading so many reviews!
For our range, I chose GE’s Cafe gas range. We worked with Queen City Home Store here in Charlotte to help us make our selection and they were just wonderful. It felt solid and well made, had great Consumer Reports ratings and retailer reviews, and was pretty. Swapping our old range out for a slide in was really important to us so that we would have more space for an accent in our backsplash below the new range hood.
In all my research, I could not find a dishwasher and range from the same company that was everything I was looking for. So, I decided to go with a Bosch dishwasher. The reviews were excellent and I love that there is no branding on the outside – so that I could mix and match it with my other appliances.
I have had a few people ask about replacing our built-in microwave with the range hood. We chose a Zephyr insert and of course we still have a microwave but I now have a GE countertop model that was relocated to our panty. We have electrical in there and it makes it less of an eyesore for our space. We don’t use our microwave often so by moving it to the pantry we opened up a lot of space in our kitchen.
I also wanted to share about our new sink and faucet today. We previously had a dual basin under mount sink. I hated the dual basin because it didn’t give me enough space to soak larger pans or baking sheets. Also because it was so old it just didn’t look clean despite me cleaning it all the time! We purchased this sink from Wayfair and I chose this faucet by Kohler. It doesn’t have any fancy features, such as touch on and off but I am perfectly happy with having less parts to break! I am really looking forward to the new bronze faucet – I know chrome and brass are all the rage right now in kitchen renovations but bronze is still my personal favorite for hardware!
Along with our sink and faucet, I also ordered our hardware from Wayfair. We needed over forty knobs (!) so I went with these from the Wayfair Basics line and am so pleased with the quality. I even ordered an extra set so that I could swap the old brass knobs on our built-ins in the living room.
I decided to swap the knobs on our drawer fronts out to pulls. We have so many knobs currently in our kitchen that I think that will give us a little variety. I chose these three inch pulls and then ordered the larger size for the drawers in our new appliance garage.
After a lot of back and forth we decided to keep the lighting above our island as is for now. We swapped the fixture out when we moved in to our home but as we were looking at kitchen inspiration Corey and I both fell in love with the idea of two lanterns above our island. We still aren’t ruling that idea out for the future but ultimately decided to hold off on that for now simply because we didn’t want to have to paint the ceiling! We already did that once when we first moved in so for now we are keeping our current island light and if it ends up not looking good then we will tackle that swap at another time.
Speaking of lighting, we did upgrade our old fluorescent under cabinet lighting to LED lights. I found that I never used our under cabinet lights before because the fluorescent bulbs looked very dated to me. We also had our favorite electrician swap all my dingy brown outlets out for fresh cream colored ones, which I know will look great with the backsplash. So, I am very excited for these changes as well – once our lighter countertops and backsplash are in.
While I don’t have a whole lot to show for this week, we sure are making progress! I can’t wait to share the countertops and backsplash with you in next week’s post! Don’t forget to stop by the One Room Challenge to see all of the other room transformations in progress this season.
