Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Lessons Learned.

Let me start this post by saying how much I love my kitchen. I feel like an official grown up to have a house where we can entertain. I am so proud of it. It was a lot of work but it was also very rewarding to figure out the endless details.
I have received some emails about our renovation experience and those have spurred me to write a short list of what I would do differently- you know how hindsight works.
The pendants: I selected these from Kichler.


I wanted to add a fancy, industrial vibe to our space and these were the right size and price. However, when you sit under them it feels a bit like you have a spotlight on your face. I do wish the bottom had a filter like these: I did not select these because they are 3" larger than what I have in my kitchen and I did not want the proportion to be too large.

Do you see what I mean?

Next, our spice rack. Here's the back story. We received our cabinets for free. They came from a model home that was being broken down -talk about being in the right place at the right time. Our cabinet guy needed 5" on our lowers so he used this drawer front and built a spice rack. I wish we had only 2 drawers instead of three so we could fit our taller bottles- like olive oil, Pam, vinegars, etc...It's not a big deal, those are in the pantry but I would redo that design.

Last detail: how to disguise the microwave. I hate how much counter space it eats up. We simply ran out of room to incorporate the microwave as a built in, but in kitchen planning this detail would take priority for future designs. If you are renovating your kitchen, I hope this was a helpful post. Best of luck!

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

great advice. it's hard to know some of those things until you live in it! I need to start a list of things I must have for our future kitchen -- hidden microwave being A#1!

Britt said...

I love the lights you chose. If you really wanted to filter the light, and if your fixtures have a lip on the bottom inside, you could get a frosted ceiling tile and cut it to size and then just pop it into the fixture so it would rest on the lip. I did this with my DIY chandeliers and it turned out great. Just a thought!