Kitchen Island

I haven't shown you our kitchen island yet, but here it is uncovered in all of its natural untouched glory. It's been sitting in our outbuilding covered by a tarp for a couple months until we were able to take some time to paint it and bring it inside. Isn't it beautiful? We paid Adam's old co-worker from Raleigh to custom make one for us and he did an awesome job! It even has a place for a microwave with a hollowed out leg for the cord to run down through.

This picture below is the very first one I saved in my "inspiration" folder as a color palette for my kitchen. Love those muted neutrals, striking black and that pop of red.

And I loved this rug I had picked up last summer in Raleigh at a garage sale with it's grays whites and muted pinks and greens.

So after bringing home a gazillion sample cards of red home from Home Depot, we came up with this!!
I just love it. It's just the perfect pinky red that I was trying to achieve. I wanted something to tie in the brick fireplace, but not be too dark or dreary and give us that pop of color from my original picture. I mulled over the colors for days wondering if I should do the awesome-ly distressed gray that people are doing or a striking black, but when I got stumped that's when I pulled out my inspiration folder and remembered what I really wanted initially.

I can't wait to get my microwave back too! We've just kept ours in the box until we could put it in its rightful home. I don't know about you but stirring around leftover mac n' cheese in a frying pan to warm it up gets kind of old...

Oh yeah, did you notice my cows on the wall. Here's a close up.

I love them too. But what I love even more is hearing my 17 month old do his best cow impression, "Ooooooo," every time we pass them. :)

We plan to top it off with butcher block too.

Wow. That was rude.

Man. I am so sorry about that. So, apparently when you don't have the internet for 2 weeks you aren't able to use the internet to tell people you don't have the internet. Well, at least you get things done around the house when you don't have a blog to keep up with. Here's a pictoral update of what we've been up to.

I'm also not to proud to post my "not so pretty" areas. There's a garage sale pile in the corner of the sitting room, the hallway in all it's glory and let's not even mention the dresser in the bedroom. Yes, I've heard of photoshop, but this is real life people! :)

In answering a few questions of some commenters:

1. Our living room color is Croissant by Sherwin Williams. Love it and we get a lot of compliments on it.

2. Lady in Arkansas renovating a house- we did in fact go over some existing flooring with the concrete, but we pulled up some vinyl parquet tiles before that and laid down some plywood and some metal screen before the concrete was poured. I'll be in touch. :)

I changed my mind

Annnnddd, I switched up the kitchen again. I'll blog details later. Nothing drastic. Let's just say that the island is now an island and the stove will sit in front of the chimney (on the kitchen side of course).

Can you see it?

These is a picture of the type and color of kitchen cabinets we're going to order.

These are the old ones from the utility room that we're integrating in with the new ones.

Although cute and bold, this is NOT our kitchen. We did however just buy that kitchen sink at IKEA pictured above those cute little cheery little cherry curtains.

This is an 3D image of the kitchen island that we're going for. We've hired a friend of ours, Ryan, in Raleigh to build it for us. He worked with Adam at his previous job and is very skilled in this kind of woodworking. A couple things have changed though since another friend, Matt, drew this up for us. 1. There's going to be a 2-door cabinet underneath the sink. 2. The left hand cabinet will have a drawer above it. 3. It will have big ol' table legs on all of the corners. 4. AND there will be a bar area behind the sink. 5. And I'm thinking about painting it gray...6. I don't know about countertops yet though....


Lastly, the island really won't be an island at all. More like a peninsula that will jut up to the fireplace and hide that hideous cement job. We are keeping both walk-throughs open to the living room. As you look at this picture, the bar seating area will be the side that Adam is on and the cabinets, dishwasher and sink, will be on the other side. The wall to the right (not pictured, but it's the one with the window on it) will hold all of the other base and upper cabinets, stove, fridge and pantry. It'll basically be a galley kitchen except with 2 walk-throughs to minimize traffic and maximize on open space.