Kitchen shelf love

This may be a classic case of a picture is worth a thousand words.

I love open shelves in kitchens. Whether they're elegantly decorative or eclectic and functional, open shelves have a certain warm, inviting charm. So you can imagine my happy dance when Will put up my wall shelves. It's the perfect place to stash the girls' art supplies.

And a place to showcase my favorite Mason Cash bowl. I smile every time I walk into my kitchen.

The new display space inspired me to research white ironstone. Did you know that white ironstone is trendy? I had no idea. Is there some odd Jungian collective kitchen decorating unconscious at work here? I've been spending many happy hours puttering around etsy looking at white ironstone.

You can really see the wall color here...Farrow & Ball Farrow's Cream. A gently sunny color...perfect for our many gray New England days. Only a few more items to finish before my kitchen is 100% done. (Or maybe it will always be a work lovingly in progress...)

Ringing in the new (IKEA Ramsjö butler's pantry)

We said goodbye to 2010 quietly. The past two days were not soaked in auld lang syne and champagne. Instead, bleary-eyed after an intense two days of IKEA cabinet building, we paused for a quick prosecco toast, surrounded by stray screws and a massive cardboard mountain.

This morning, we awoke to 2011 and our new butler's pantry.

Like the kitchen proper, the butler's pantry needs more finish work, but for now, it functions. You can see a peek of the Farrow & Ball Farrow's Cream (the wall color for both pantry and kitchen). Below is the pull-out pantry. Fantastic for organizing pantry staples and canned goods.

Can I confess something?

I'm tired of making design decisions. Between refreshing our old house for sale and renovating this one, I'm on my third straight year of renovations. I'm crispy. Many of you have been renovating your older homes for years. I don't know how you do it. Many, many kudos to you.

So. I just wanted the butler's pantry done. No angsting over details. I did have a few requirements. 1. I wanted wood. My butler's pantry is at a junction between kitchen, dining room, mudroom, and back hall. It's high traffic, and I thought wood would hold up better (and be easier to paint or redo if dinged). 2. I wanted to complement the already existing finishes in the house. 3. I needed for it to be done relatively inexpensively.

The black-brown Ramsjö is more transitional than my eclectic, vintage-looking kitchen. The color echoes the black Aga, the dark soapstone, my black dining and breakfast room chairs, and the black painted paneling in the powder room. It's also a beautiful kitchen cabinet door and finish. To boost the vintage factor, I'll add a Vermont Danby marble counter (we're using a butcher block remnant for now). I'm also on the hunt for an antique mirror to use as a backsplash, and maybe...if I'm feeling ambitious, I'll wallpaper the interior back.

Of course...I put mixed pulls on the cabinetry.

The pull toward the rear is the polished nickel Bistro from Restoration Hardware. The knobs are all from Anthropologie (from left to right, the Ceramic Melon Knob in linen,  the Chronograph Knob, and Mercury Glass Melon Knob). Whew! I love having fun with hardware.

I hope that you all had a wonderful 2010. Here's to many adventures (and only a few misadventures) in 2011!

It works!

It works! It really works!

After months of work, we finally have a working basement bathroom again! When your only other bathroom for the lower two floors is dollhouse-sized, this is really cause for celebration. We haven't passed inspection, and we still have a few remaining things to do. So no full reveal yet. But here are some photos of our work in progress.







I'm so pleased with my IKEA Lillangen sink. It's incredible that you can get such a stylish piece at the price. To accentuate its farmhouse feel, I paired it with this Price Pfister Ashfield faucet that's reminiscent of an old-fashioned outdoor water pump. Beadboard (painted in the ever-popular Benjamin Moore White Dove), white-and-black dot octagon tile, and a barn-style lighting fixture complete the vintage, farmhouse look. I would have preferred the Lillangen's metal-framed glass doors over the solid white mdf door, but unfortunately, our plumbing came in from the side wall and would have been very visible through the frosted glass. Sometimes you have to accommodate what's there.

Just a few details to finish up, and this DIY remodel can be checked off the "to do" list.

High/low

A fabric that I'm currently obsessing over is Schumacher's Katsugi. Designers are abuzz about this fabric, especially in the gold/mushroom colorway. In my kitchen, I can just imagine the Blues or Link and Sepia framing my kitchen windows. The downside to this piece of textile fabulosity? Schumacher fabric is available only to the trade, and the only price I've been able to uncover is $98/yard. Gulp.

Today, I was at IKEA. While rummaging through their fabrics, I discovered their Patricia fabrics. Certainly not as detailed or sophisticated as the Schumacher. Far, far from it. But it has a similar feel (though not a similar scale) at a mere $7.99/yard.


Schumacher Katsugi in gold and mushroom




IKEA Patricia fabric

The IKEA photos from its website are unfortunately far from the best. However, it may be worth checking out this fabric next time you're at the store.

A time to build

What a difference. What a difference a day makes. And new countertops (budget IKEA butcherblock). And a new faucet (Hansgrohe Metro from Costco). And a new fridge (Samsung from Lowe's). The kitchen looks fantastic. Well. Okay. Ignore the duct tape/aged sheet vinyl patchwork flooring. Other than that. And the halfway demolished cabinetry on the refrigerator wall. Maybe somewhat improved is a more accurate term.

The countertop hasn't been permanently affixed yet. It needs multiple layers of Waterlox, and the sink needs to be caulked. But the fridge is cold and full of food. The water is running. And I am beyond thrilled. So thrilled that I'm about to slap on a white subway backsplash, get the abatement people to just cut around the existing cabinets, and call it a day. Not really, but for now, I'm going to enjoy.

Some photos:

The old version. Note the metal-framed insets of some flimsy plasticky material. The frame trapped crumbs and would allow some to fall through to the drawers below. Ewww.



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