The Big Kitchen Reveal

Did the suspense kill you? Did having to wait over a week to see our fully-painted kitchen just kill you (after waiting more than two whole years since the start of this renovation)??

No?

Good. You've definitely got your priorities in life straight then. Unlike me.

Because I was beyond impatient. And with a lounge room that looked like this while we waited another few days for the paint to cure properly, can you blame me?

And then... the moment finally arrived when we could start attaching doors! I could hardly contain my excitement.

Although using the word "moment" is a bit misleading. It takes a long time to hang cupboard doors so that they all line up just right and don't knock into their neighbours.

Tom did a brilliant job of it. Don't those cabinets and shelves look so beautiful you want to stroke them?

No? Just me?

The lower drawers and cabinet then got that same treatment, and our kitchen was starting to look kitchen-y again!

The under-sink cabinet then got its doors too, and we slotted baskets in the nooks below. I got completely lucky with those baskets. We built those nooks entirely based on the width of the sink cabinet, and I just figured at the time that I would find baskets that fitted the space as closely as possible, and that would be that. But then I discovered that finding exactly the right size basket is actually incredibly difficult!

So when I say I got really lucky, I stumbled across the online store Zanui and did a little search in their organisation section. They had THE PERFECT SIZED BASKETS for our nooks! So perfect that there's only a few millimetres gap around them! And they were cheap, too, at only about $19 each. A small win, but a great one!

So then we started installing the skirting boards and little trim pieces around things like the wine fridge space, so that it would look lovely and finished off.

While Tom was mucking around hanging cabinet doors and nailing in skirting board, I decided to amuse myself with our pantry.

As you know from this post of yore, I have always intended to paint the inset sections of our pantry doors with blackboard paint.

Like I demonstrated in this photo-shopped version of the pantry.

But painting with blackboard paint takes time. And I'd had my fill of painting cabinets for the moment. So in the interests of saving time (and effectively having an 'erase' button if I didn't like the effect), I instead bought some blackboard sticky wall decals, cut them to size, and carefully stuck them on!

And when Tom hung them for me I was pretty darn happy with them!

And they'll be incredibly useful! For writing messages to each other or shopping lists, or perhaps more importantly, lists of Allie's multitude of nicknames so that we can keep track of them all!

So back to the important stuff, more cabinet door installation! This time the doors above the pantry cabinet that were mostly glass (which is of course sheer joy to paint)!

Once all of the doors and drawer fronts were installed (sorry, you're going to have to wait to see them all... or just scroll down to the big reveal)... then it was handle time!

At first I was thinking that it would be sensible to go with black handles and cabinet knobs in order to tie in with our black stove. So, I bought these little black handles from Ebay...

And these black knobs with a white porcelain inset that I thought looked pretty nice.

But when the handles arrived, they were so teeny tiny that you couldn't even get your fingers through them to pull the drawer out!

Definite ordering fail on my part. I should have actually considered the fact that the place for the handles on all of our drawer fronts is set in from the rest, so they need to be deep enough to still get your fingers in.

So we didn't install any of the handles, and I returned them to the Ebay shop. Thankfully they were lovely and gave me a full refund (less postage).

So then for the knobs! We traced the outline of the back plate of the knobs onto a little piece of paper...

And cut the paper to size so that we could line it up with the corner of each cupboard door to mark the place where the screw would need to go...

Then drilled through that mark in each door so that all of the knobs would line up perfectly and be in exactly the same position relative to the corner of each cabinet door...

And then we installed the knobs!

And here again we hit a snag. They're definitely nice knobs, no denying that. But with the bright white ceramic insert sitting almost directly against our very pale grey doors, they looked a bit weird.

We've always wanted this kitchen to look pretty fancy, and I felt like these knobs (and the lack of drawer handles so far) were letting us down! So I did a bit of thinking and came to a decision.

IKEA.

Yes, IKEA is a decision. I made a special trip to IKEA and bought us some lovely, simple, non-attention-grabbing brushed steel Metrik handles and little knobs.

We installed them, and breathed a sigh of relief. MUCH better! I think there's a good lesson for us in this. Not everything in a room has to make a statement! These handles and knobs don't demand attention, they're functional, and they allow other things in the room to shine. Like our beautifully painted cabinets, right?

Allowing these beauties to shine! And of course the brushed stainless steel look of the handles plays very nicely with both the rangehood and all the trimmings on the stove.

Ohh it's so beautiful it hurts!

The one paint colour has united all of the mismatched cabinets, and I'm so glad we decided to go with the consistent lighter colour.

Although a darker colour on the lower cabinets could have worked, and it would have meant that the appliances wouldn't stand out so much, this lighter colour has a lovely crisp feel to it and it reflects SO much light!

I wish I had taken a better photo of the whole room before it got filled up with junk again while we worked elsewhere, but such is the life of a renovator!

So let's just enjoy a few more junk-free close-up shots of our beautiful cabinets, shall we?

The lighter colour has certainly unified the fridge wall, which was always going to be a bit crowded and overwhelming with everything going on on that wall.

And because the shelves are so close to the same colour of the wall now, they virtually disappear!

We also cut a section off the back of all of the shelves on the sink wall so that they are now all only a tiny bit deeper than the support brackets. Even just that little bit of depth removed has made a big impact. They hardly impinge on the space at all!

So? On a scale of one to ten, how big an improvement is it, do you think? From this?

Or better yet, this?

I'm going to go with 1000.