Kitchen "Before" & "After" — Three Little Limes

Ta-da! Our kitchen is so bright and cheery now!

When Alex purchased our home in December 2015, we knew right away the kitchen would need to be renovated to fit our style. The first thing that had to go was the laminate flooring! Prior to moving into the home, the laminate floor in the kitchen was replaced with hardwood, continuing the style that already existed on the main level of the home in the entryway, dining room and living room.

The “Before” kitchen featured natural cabinets, black appliances, laminate floors, and a plastic laminate counter top. I still cringe when I see this floor!

“Before” Dining Room & Kitchen. We continued the hardwood floor from the dining room into the kitchen. I will do a separate post with the complete “After” of the dining room.

Gradually, over the course of two years, we updated everything else! First, we swapped all of the appliances for stainless steel to create a modern and fresh look. We purchased the Whirlpool refrigerator and dishwasher (similar linked here) from Home Depot. We found our beautiful 4-burner Viking range on Craigslist (Alex’s favorite “store”) for a fraction of the cost of buying one new.

Next, we had our carpenter fit the cabinet below the sink with a custom-built support that would be able to hold the weight of our 30” white farm sink (purchased from Wayfair). We absolutely love our farm sink! It is so charming and guests almost always remark on it. We highly recommend buying a grate to sit in the bottom of the sink so that your dishes do not stain the bottom. I use Clorox Bleach on the sink once a week and it has stayed perfectly white.

We ordered our counter tops from Imperial Marble & Granite in Essington, PA and chose a gorgeous slab of Namibia Sky 3cm Polished Quartzite. We went with quartzite because of its durability/hardness, heat resistance and great price point!

As we hardly used the microwave, we decided to get rid of it entirely and install a stainless steel range hood purchased from Signature Hardware. Unfortunately, it is no longer available on their site. We also ordered our faucet from Signature Hardware (link here). We knew we wanted the option a pull-down faucet but were unsure whether to go with a single-hole or triple hole with separate sprayer. I had seen so many beautiful styles, like this one, but knew they were more prone to leaks. Plus, we have limited counter space to begin with, so I decided the simpler the better. We absolutely love how functional our faucet is!

The small kitchen cart (we removed the wheels) is from Joss & Main. The exact one is no longer available but they have a few similar ones I like listed here, here and here). We decided to have the cart painted to match the cabinets. Although I sometimes enjoy the look of mix-and-match paint colors, in our small kitchen, congruity makes it appear larger.

While I love my cart, you get what you pay for! As it is a cheaper item, it was pretty frustrating to assemble and I found that not all of the pieces lined up correctly. The drawer still does not open and close very smoothly despite our painter spending hours trying to sand down certain parts and adjust the hardware. It is fine for our little kitchen right now, but I still dream of a large island in our next home!

There was much debate between me and Alex about whether or not we should use the top of the cart as a true cutting block without a cutting mat below. I say chop away (and got my way!). I cut directly onto the top and am not bothered by the small knife marks (it adds character!).