Home Remodel - White Kitchen

I mentioned in my previous post that we recently remodeled the kitchen in our home.  We have been enjoying the new space so much and it has been so much fun finding new little accessories to warm it up and really make it feel like home.

I promised photos and they are all here in this post, but first...the before.

 This is the view from the dining/living room into the kitchen area.  Our house is situated in a snug canyon in Los Angeles and although I love the trees and seclusion it offers, we get very little direct light in the house and it can be gloomy in the afternoon.  We decided to let in more of the morning light that fills the kitchen, by taking out the wall separating the two rooms, widening the doorway and creating a new eating area at a breakfast bar.

 Here is the new view of the kitchen from the dining/living room.  We are thrilled with the amount of natural light that we have now and the entire house feels so much more open and airy.  We repurposed the little used (mostly as a space for piles of papers) eat-in breakfast nook inside of the kitchen area.It is now a cozy a window seat and office area with huge drawers (to hide the paper piles in).  We are in the process of adding cushions and pillows to the bench.  I look forward to sharing those with you later in another post.

We switched out the heavy oak cabinets for bright white with stainless steel features and replaced the floors with a darker chocolate-black wood.  I researched countertop material endlessly looking for something as beautiful as marble that wouldn't greedily suck up every substance that was placed on top of it and eventually decided that the imperfections are a part of its charm.  Each one is memory of meals shared with loved ones, a Birthday celebrated or a seven year old's love of science experiments.  I have stopped worrying over every scratch and stain and have decided to just enjoy it.  We have been happily rolling pie crusts directly on it ever since.

I'll go into detail more about the accessories we chose in future posts.  We are still looking for new dining chairs to match the antique movie seats that we bought in Summerland.