Meet Our New Kitchen

I promise not to spend long with opening pleasantries, but it is podcast day, you know, so here's your weekly dose of Shafferland chatter...in which we celebrate the FINAL SALE of our Marion home and let you peek in on Mommapalooza 3.0! So...enjoy!

 Click here to listen.

NOW.

You've been asking and asking to see pictures of our new place, and I've held off, because I wanted the rooms to be {mostly} complete before we shared. I know that with the two of us, no room is ever TOTALLY complete, but I believe we have hit the stage where we can call it done enough for pictures!

This post might be a bit longer than some other room introductions I share with you, because we did the most work in this room. In many ways, this kitchen is a recreation of the kitchen in our old home. We overhauled that kitchen just a few months after we got married, and there were so many things about it that we dearly loved, so we transferred them to the new home. But it was still completely different, because the layouts of the two kitchens are nothing alike. Our old kitchen, as you can see in the link above, was a galley style kitchen, and it didn't have abundant light. It was also at the opposite end of the house from our living area. Our new kitchen is a big square with room for a small table, and now it's also an open concept to the living area. It was not when we bought it!

So these are the two pictures I took the night we first walked in as owners of this house. {And now I wish I would have taken just a few more!}

I loved the floors {which I believe they had redone not long ago}. I loved the big feel of it after sixteen years of a galley kitchen. I loved the wonderful, natural light from the windows. I loved the microwave over the stove. I loved that it had a pantry! This, I felt, was a kitchen we could love and use so well.

I am not a wallpaper girl, so I wasn't crazy about the wallpaper backsplash. And Ryan said that wall above the sink had to go entirely. You can probably see there that it goes up and stops just about the same place the TV {which is also gone now, by the way} ends. It didn't go clear to the ceiling, but it went definitely high enough that you couldn't be in the kitchen and interact with anyone in the living room.

He wanted that wall down on the double. I asked {only because I wanted to be able to just move in and settle without a lot of drama} to live with it a year or so and then see if we really wanted it down. Ryan asked {ever so lovingly} to take it down immediately, and I could tell it was really important to him, so I said okay.

He. Was. So. Right. That thing made a RIDICULOUS mess, and I cannot imagine, now, dealing with it while living in a furnished house. Plus, the house is just a million times better with it down. How glad am I that he fought for that one!?

So here are a few pictures of the room in progress. {The wall, by the way, came down LESS than 24 hours after the pictures above were taken. Many thanks to our friend Troy for helping with demo and for coming back every single day for a week to mud/sand/fix the wall areas damaged by the demo.}

They took down the cabinets and saved them all. Some were put back in the kitchen later, although in different spots from where they'd been before, and the rest were eventually hung in the garage to hold overflow items that didn't fit in the kitchen itself. 

 Wall's comin' down!

 And when I arrived later that night, this was the mess I walked into. LOL! But look how lovely it is to see into the next room!

 Scraping that wallpaper. I seriously thought it was going to win the war.

My friend Amber came to help me scrape wallpaper. At that point, she was my sanity.

Troy came back over and over to work on the repairs.

When he was done mudding and sanding, I was cleared to paint the room. The entire house was a neutral tan when we moved in, and while I liked that color, I wanted more than just that color. We so loved the autumn fog color of our old kitchen that we brought it right into this one! {And for the record, I did wash that shirt in between pictures...}

Our friend Shawn came over one night and helped Ryan reinstall cabinets! THANK YOU, SHAWN!

I've mentioned a time or two about the stone wall feature we did - on the OTHER side of the wall. But halfway through, Ryan decided he wanted it for backsplash, too. So he worked ridiculously hard to get that installed, and it looks stunning. {For the record, I tried to talk him out of it, mostly because of the time factor for installation. I even Pinterested other, faster alternatives. But he wanted the stone, and he was the one installing it. And I'm so glad now that he did!

 We also ordered a two foot wide black countertop to place over the spot where the wall came down. There are no pictures of its installation because we ended up doing it ourselves, and it was HEAVY. No time to set timers and run and pose. Just get the thing UP THERE. But it looks so good, and the rope lighting he added really gave it an extra lovely touch.

So that was the work phase!

And now...the after photos to match the before ones:

And in case you struggle with comparisons without seeing side by side, here you go. {Click to enlarge if you need to.}

A quick recap from these pictures. We left the floors alone. We took down the curtains they left and put up our own - which were actually the same curtains we had at our old house. They "just happened" to perfectly work at this new house! Ryan raised the light after hitting his head on it for the 437th time. {Spoiler alert: we are actually looking for a new light for over the table. One a little more "Shaffery."} Ryan and Troy knocked down half the wall to open up the space. I scraped off all the wallpaper in the backsplash area and Ryan installed the AirStone wall in its place. We replaced the hardware with an updated, brushed nickel look. Ryan added rope lighting under the newly installed bar-height counter top and under the cabinets. Ryan and Shawn reinstalled some of the cabinets that had been taken down. I painted the entire room a light blue color from Lowe's called Autumn Fog. And then we put in all our coffee decor.

Almost all our decorations are repeats from the old house. I think we added two new ones, and that's it. {And one of those was a gift!}

You can see here the contrast between the regular counter tops and the new black one we purchased for the bar height counter. We were unable to find an exact match to what existed {since it's older and has cycled out} so we decided to contrast instead, and I really like it. Thanks, Amber, for helping us make a decision on that when you were here!

My pottery mixing bowls...a hand-me-down from Lynne when I worked at the station. I love those things!

I think Miss Mixy looks extra regal next to her new stone wall home. :)

Our one new piece of art! A gift from Lindsay Sherbondy at Lindsay Letters when I visited her storefront, called Letters on Main, as part of our trip to Wisconsin. I love this so much. It's so us!

One of only two new pieces we purchased for this house {so far, anyway}. We feared our nice big dining room table would cramp up this space way too much, and we had sold my old, square kitchen table. That was okay though, because it was tall, and I didn't want tall furniture blocking this amazing window. So on Valentine's Day {after our offer on this house had already been accepted}, we went to a big store in Indianapolis called Weekends Only, and we found this table. It's perfect. It's little, there are no chair backs popping up to block the view, it makes a great island for extra prep if needed, and it has scads of character. We love it so much.

And our favorite part: the coffee bar. This is the closest thing to a coffee shop we have. We love our open shelving to house all our mugs, and we have allllllll our coffee stuff here. Keurig, regular coffee pot, French press, pour over, all of it. :) And we were able to squeeze in my buffet that used to be my grandma's! :)

So I realize this has been a very long post, and I do apologize, but I wanted you feel like you were actually over visiting us! Hope you love our kitchen as much as we do. Ryan especially worked SO HARD on this room to transform it into the vision in his mind. He did a great job! Thanks to all our many helpers who pitched in on this room! {HUGE shout out to Sandee for cleaning the parts that freaked me out!}