I let this past week get away from me with projects at home along with the usual things on my “To Do” list, so I wasn’t able to post on schedule. While putting together the post on the alcove, I realized I wanted to put up some before and after shots of the entire kitchen.When we first viewed our house, we had just made it to the second floor when we realized we wanted to put in an offer at that moment.. without even heading up to the third floor. That didn’t mean there wasn’t anything we wanted to change. The stagers for the house did a nice job, but it didn’t reflect our personalities. The first thing on the list was the kitchen.

The floors of the house were definitely worn and scuffed. Initially, we were planning on having them stained darker, but once we saw the beautiful sanded yellow pine beneath our feet, we opted to keep it natural, only adding a couple coats of polyurethane. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned how much I disliked the buttercream walls on multiple occasions. I felt it clashed with the red brick behind the stove. Although the kitchen has multiple windows, the hanging eave off the back porch and the neighbor’s house to the east doesn’t allow as much natural light into the room as I would like. We painted the walls white to brighten the mood. I also dreaded the idea of trying to clean cooking splatter from painted walls, so we knew we were going to need a backsplash. Graham and I talked about doing white subway tiles, but when I found white honeycomb tiles on Wayfair, I fell in love with the vintage, yet modern, feel.  Although he always complained whenever I went on about how much I love chalkboard walls, Graham suggested we paint one in the kitchen (aww.. one of the reasons why I married him). We used to keep our grocery list on Google Keep, but I love writing it out on something tangible. We’re usually in the kitchen when we realize we’re out of something, so it’s convenient to scribble it out then, and really, who doesn’t like writing on chalkboard? It’s also nice to temporarily jot dates while you’re on the phone and can’t access your Google Calendar.Uh….we still haven’t gotten around to erasing the seasoning marks towards the ceiling..

Then of course, there’s the shelving…Our biggest accomplishment with the kitchen actually has nothing to do with paintbrushes, wallpaper, etc. When we moved in, we knew we were going to need a new kitchen rug since our old one had definitely seen better days. We first purchased one with a geometric print from Society6, but we freaked out when we opened the package and saw that the colors didn’t translate well from online to real life. We found ourselves face to face with lavender, navy, and neon pink triangles which I’m sure would be lovely!… in another kitchen. Strike One. We then tried our luck with RugsUsa. Well… we ended up being out $80, but we got a good laugh out of the rug that looked as if it would be more at home in a kindergarten classroom. Strike Two. We were definitely suffering from online rug shopping PTSD and were reluctant to try our luck again.

We took a chance on a hemp rug from Target that I wasn’t too crazy about. Once we laid it out in the kitchen, I immediately decided it needed to go, and back it went. Strike Three.

One day, while on yet another trip to Ikea (if you’ve bought a new house, prepare to spend so much time at Home Depot and Ikea that they should just start paying you to work there), we found a rug we thought would be perfect. In a perfect world, we’d have a white rug, but since we’re imperfect people in the kitchen, we knew that would never fly. But this rug was white with enough mottled dark hues that would hide potential cooking snafus.

We got it home and unrolled it…at least we tried to.. Although we knew the rug was wider than we needed, we thought we might be able to slip the excess inches under the refrigerator. Nope. My resourceful husband, however, was not going to give up.. He wasn’t going to be victimized by yet another rug. So he dragged the rug to the back porch with a hacksaw..Problem Solved.

Stacy