Hartnett Highlights: Kitchen Update

Hi, everyone! Welcome to another edition of the Hartnett Highlights: Kitchen Update. Kieran and I purchased a house a year ago that was built in 1938. Although the house is adorable, it hasn’t been cosmically updated in decades. This post will highlight our plans to remodel our nasty ass kitchen.

The previous owner spent tons of time and money restoring the guts and structural components of the house. She updated: the furnace, water heater, roof, some windows, refinished the basement, retiled the main level bathroom, the plumbing, and some electric. She meant to update the kitchen, but never got around to it. Kieran and I get to tackle bringing new life in an old ass space.

To say the kitchen has aged horribly is an understatement. We walked in to find decrepit cabinets, worn vinyl flooring, and yellow-ish walls which used to be white. The kitchen was also tiny as fuck! We determined our best course of action was to tear down the wall between the kitchen and dining room to open up the space.

Taking down the kitchen wall was crazy but fun. Click here to read all about it.

Once the wall came down, it became abundantly clear we needed design help. We had no idea how to marry the two rooms together. As you’ll see in the pictures below, this kitchen lacks flow. The small ass kitchen was built with 3 entryways, 1 exterior door, and 2 interior doors. So instead of having a nice U-shape layout, my kitchen looks choppy and nonsensical.

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You can also tell by the photos, once we tore down the wall, I literally had no counter or storage space. We developed a make-shift kitchen using old Ikea furniture so I would have somewhere to put my stuff. I felt hopeless in terms of kitchen design but luckily for me I had an ace in the hole, my good friend Danyel Ilg.

Danyel graduated with a degree in design. She graciously agreed to help design my kitchen. Danyel is extraordinarily talented so I knew we were in good hands.

Words can’t describe how excited I felt when I found Danyel’s kitchen design proposal waiting in my inbox.

The moment I set eyes on Danyel’s proposal, I was in love. Danyel came up with a comprehensive design to help the dining room and kitchen talk to each other. She also provided invaluable guidance in regard to color schemes, furniture selection, flooring and tiling, painting, lighting, and accessories to meet my needs.

I adore the ideas Danyel hatched but two are my absolute favorite. The first being the floor tile (more on that later) and the storage inspiration for an entryway in the kitchen. Somewhere years down the road we’ll probably drywall the entryway, but in the meantime, we need another solution. Danyel suggested building shallow shelving within the door frame to turn the entryway into a pantry closet. Kieran and I can build a barn door that swings behind the refrigerator. The idea is genius, I love it!

Danyel forwarded inspiration ideas along with her floor plan:

Kieran and I especially fell in love with her flooring concept. She suggested we tile our kitchen with hexagon tiles that bleed (cut into) the existing dining room floor. Here’s another example:

I don’t particularly want the kitchen floor to resemble a checkered pattern, so we may do a gradient pattern instead. We’ve contacted a few companies to give us an in-house estimate. One company said they could complete the job, no problem. Another company admitted cutting into the existing dining room floor was scary.

We are shopping around for tile while we obtain additional quotes. We’re getting close to making a decision. I can’t wait to see Danyel’s ideas come to fruition! In a couple of months, the kitchen floor should be finished. I’m currently afraid to take off my socks and walk around barefoot. I may come down with influenza or tuberculosis, or whatever else is lurking on the old flooring. I’ll jump for joy once the nasty ass vinyl flooring is gone!

Whelp, that will do it for this week’s edition of the Hartnett Highlights: Kitchen Update!

Thanks for stopping by,

Christina