Thoroughly Modern Gillie

I am sharing my kitchen renovation before and after. Other than some painting this was not a DIY project. I know my limits.

December 2017 I moved into a town house. I looked at a number of them in the area. Some had been beautifully renovated. One, in particular, had a beautiful open kitchen but the work upstairs did not make me happy and would have bugged me like crazy but I thought, and my realtor agreed, that one would be reluctant to “break” such a recent reno to fix the problems. I chose a place that was good but needed some work here and there.

The first job was the existing bathroom. Except for the toilet, it was the original setup from the 1970s. It had a builder tub, with original linoleum flooring, and the sink and cabinet were uncomfortably low. I replaced the tub with a nice deep soaker tub, new cabinet floor, and wall tiles. Beautiful!

Time to bring the kitchen into this millenium…

The next project was the kitchen. It had been updated from the original but not recently.  It was very dated with oak cabinets and a linoleum counter and just a complete lack of cohesive style. The appliances were fairly new. Originally I had wanted to open the kitchen and create a great room with the sitting/dining room, but after seeing how this had worked out for a couple of my neighbors, I decided that it would not give me what I wanted. The sitting-dining room space had developed a charm that I didn’t want to interfere with.

The kitchen when I bought this place…

I decided that in an elegant Parisian apartment the kitchen would not be seen from the other rooms. (In reality, it would likely be hardly large enough to make coffee). Instead, we closed in the small pass-through for a little more cabinet space, removed the weird microwave shelf and installed a microwave and fan over the range.

The original light fixture was like a giant sled on the ceiling. We replaced it with 4 LED pot lights that generate a lot more light. We also added LED under cabinet lighting which is a total game changer. The custom cabinets are shaker style with a beveled, rather than a square edge in a soft grey. The white square tiles with the ivy decal are gone and replaced with this lovely mixed glass and aluminum combination. The counters are Angola black granite. Quite stunning and I love how it reflects the tiles. The floor is Armstrong linoleum but looks like slate. Eventually, the fridge will be a stainless Kitchen Aid but while the Kenmore keeps chugging away, it can stay. We made sure the opening would fit the new fridge.

After much work and $

I went with custom cabinets after seriously looking at IKEA cabinets. The cost of the IKEA cabinets does not include assembly or installation, and all sort of little and not so little problems arose that the Ikea cabinets would not have been able to work around. With the custom cabinets, we could maximize space and add some unique features. In the end, I think it was worth the extra cost.

Somehow the room looks bigger and my favorite thing about it is that there is style and cohesiveness to the room.