Black and White Kitchen - Some Simple Updates in Our New Kitchen Space

Good morning! I hope you all are having a great week. I’ve shared several angles of the progress we’ve made in our new black and white kitchen in the last couple of posts but today wanted to kind of share them all together in one spot. First though, I will give a couple of disclaimers – the round table and tiny little rug under it are not staying there. Because we plan on using this as our main dining area we put our larger table here initially (and this table was going to be used as sort of a game table in another space because we play a ton of board games!) We actually made it through this move without a single piece of furniture being damaged. We have moved a LOT and this was actually the first time that has happened. Usually at least a couple of pieces get damaged (and we’ve even had a few completely destroyed) so we were quite thrilled. However, when my husband and I were moving all the furniture out to the garage for the floors to be redone as we were twisting the dining table sideways to get it through the door and I underestimated just how much it weighed and dropped it and completely destroyed two legs and the top of it. I as so disappointed. So, for the time being we are using this smaller table in here and then I am deciding between a couple of different larger tables to go back in this spot including this one and this one.

And then that little rug is temporarily under the table because it’s the only rug we brought with us that isn’t being used somewhere else. With kids I typically prefer not to bother having a rug under the table we eat most of our meals at, however, because our floors are pine, which is a very soft wood, I’d like to have a little protection under the chairs as they get pushed in and out a million times a day. So, once I decide on a table, I will then order a more appropriately sized rug for this space. But until then we are just using what we have.

Here is the progress we made the first couple of weeks in the breakfast nook with just paint, changing the light fixtures and adding draperies. It was already a beautiful space with tons of natural light. We just made it feel a bit more like “us” with very minimal changes. I don’t have any recent before shots because this house wasn’t ever on the market and it felt weird taking pictures when we were in the house looking at it with the owner so these are from the original listing from when they purchased it several years before.

For now the only two things left I will be doing in the kitchen are changing out the hardware and changing out the faucet. However, if we live here long-term (which with my husband’s job, it’s hard to know how likely that will be) I’d like to extend all of the upper cabinets to the ceiling and then over near the stove area probably completely remove those upper cabinets and the current hood and do a large statement hood. If we do go ahead with extending all the upper cabinets then I will paint all the cabinetry a darker color and possibly replacing the counters with marble or soapstone and add a farmhouse sink. We do not plan on doing any of those things for the time being – just swapping hardware and the faucet!

Ruby made her way into quite a few pictures the other day when I was taking them but it was about an hour before she got groomed so she was looking pretty scruffy – haha!