We Dream Of…(eye candy alert)

Kitchens. Guess that’s normal when you spend nearly every waking hour for 11 days straight renovating one. Before we even started on this project, we looked through inspiration photos we’ve been collecting. So here’s a look at some of what inspired our own kitchen reno (we borrowed ideas from each):

Teresa picked out this picture for the classic-cottage look achieved by the corbels under the shelves. We are using similar corbels in our kitchen. She says they will “temper our modern aesthetic.”

Open shelves. Being able to see what’s there in an organized fashion. We’ll have two or three open shelves near our sink.

The gray paint in this kitchen is awesome. We went with a softer, beigier gray (T says it’s called greige). We also took inspiration from the rich, warm, dark floor.

This kitchen is clean and functional and simple. All things we love. This photo helped us decide on classic white subway tile for our backsplash and solid oak counter tops.

More open shelves. And lots of bright light.

A few things we took note of after we compared all of our kitchen inspiration files:

• Every kitchen we’d saved has white cabinets; we must love white cabinets.
• Warm, dark floors are the perfect way to add drama to (or anchor, as T says) a white kitchen.
• Layering whites (shelving, cabinets, backsplash, paint) can look rich and not cold.
• Open shelves are both cottagey and modern at the same time.
• Function, not design, should rule in the small kitchen; function is beautiful in a small kitchen.
• A tall, arching faucet is a must.

So that’s where we started with our kitchen renovation – browsing hundreds of photos of kitchens and identifying the things we liked in each. We also took note of things we really don’t like. We won’t post photos of kitchens we don’t like, but we’ll list a few things that didn’t make our must-have list:

• Raised wooden cabinetry, especially “cathedral” style cabinet doors.
• Shiny gold colored fixtures.
• Roosters (shocking how many kitchens are decorated with roosters!).
• Lacey curtains.
• Ivy prints.
• Country yellow.
• Busy backsplashes.
• Stone floors that contrast with other colors in the room.

Not that any of these things are bad, they’re just not us. Does everyone keep files (digital and/or print) of rooms/houses they love? Teresa’s been clipping rooms out of magazines for years. It’s nice to finally be able to use them!