The Making of our Dream Kitchen

The posts in my home building series are filled with lots of words and as much as I love to read, sometimes I also just like to look through photos! And if that speaks to you too, you’re going to love this post! I thought it would be fun to look back at our kitchen being built from start to “finish”. I put finish in quotes, because we still have a few finishing touches to add to call it complete! I also included all the good details on our selections for cabinets, countertops, backsplash, lighting and appliances at the end of the post! Enjoy!!

June 27th

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July 3rd

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July 26th

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August 2nd

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August 9th

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August 14th

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August 31st

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October 5th

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Watching your dream home being built is a remarkable process! Now let’s get to the details!

Cabinets

  • Our cabinets from Schumacher are Level 2, Spring Valley Maple Square painted Cotton. Each cabinet has satin nickel round knobs (you can mix and match styles of hardware if you’d like, maybe one style on cabinets and another on drawers) I’m so happy with the white color, they’ve been staying nice so far and are easy to clean!

Countertops

  • We decided to make a last minute upgrade to our countertops during our pre-construction meeting when comparing the options side by side one last time. There really is a significant difference between the Level 2 and Level 3 options and countertops were not something we wanted to worry about replacing later. The one we chose is quartz and the color is Eternal Calacatta Gold.

Backsplash

  • With white cabinets and a light countertop, our subway tile backsplash adds the perfect amount of contrast in the middle! The subway tile is a Level 2 (size 4×12), the color is Modern Dimensions Desert Gray and the grout color is Frost.

Pendant Lighting

  • I bought our pendant lights from Home Depot and I absolutely love them! Like the backsplash, they add another layer of contrast that works so well in the kitchen! They were fairly simple to install (by my husband of course) and came with Edison bulbs which I love for the cozy factor. Find them here 

 

A quick note before we jump into appliances: look (or wait) for sales and research price match opportunities!! I did not buy a single appliance at full price!

 

Refrigerator

  • Is it impossible to shop for appliances or what? Too many reviews – some are great, some are terrible. So to make fridge shopping easy, I ordered the same one my parents have 🙂 I’ve been really happy with it! The only thing you have to watch is the crisper drawers can get very cold. I’m talking I’ve had carrots freeze in there! I made a few small adjustments and switched around how I store a few things and it’s been totally fine! It’s quiet and works well! Find it here!

Wall Oven/Microwave Combo

  • I love our oven/microwave combo! It looks so nice in the wall and has worked perfectly! The microwave also doubles as a convectional oven; however, I haven’t used it for that yet. This type of unit will cost you a bit of money. I didn’t realize just how much until I started shopping for it and already had the kitchen cabinetry cut out, but I’ll tell you it’s worth every penny and I expect it to last a while! We bought this one!

Dishwasher

  • Y’all! this is the quietest dishwasher I’ve ever had!! Allen actually opened it the other day while it was running; it’s that quiet! That also leads to one of my two pet peeves though…it doesn’t lock when it’s running?? I need to look into this. Second, it dries the dishes very well, but the dishwasher walls themselves stay wet. Does this make sense? I don’t know, but it’s so lovely in every other way that I’m going to do a little research on these two items and continue to recommend it. I even ran it during our family get together this past Saturday and nobody knew!

Cooktop

  • I wasn’t sure about a black cooktop on our white counters surrounded by stainless steel appliances, but it looks beautiful! It’s been working perfectly since day one and is easy to clean with the appropriate cooktop cleaner! We bought this one!

Decor

  • Lastly, this basket is my favorite piece of decor in the kitchen! Granted, I don’t have much more #lessismore. 🙂 Naturally, it’s from Magnolia Market as is the dish towel. This is a large basket, but it was perfect for our oversized island. Find the basket here ;the dish towel must be hiding somewhere on their website, because I can’t seem to locate it right this minute! Luckily, they have plenty to choose from so I say have fun shopping around!

Questions? Leave me a note in the comments! Hope this post was fun and helpful!!

Have a beautiful day!

2 thoughts on “The Making of our Dream Kitchen

  1. Alexa Sherry

    This is beautiful! Do you know (approximately) how much you spent on the kitchen upgrades? We are trying to see if we can afford to build a new home, and I wanted to get an idea on upgrade costs. Thank you.

    • wifey19

      Hi there! With Schumacher every option for each room has selections in three of four different groups so choosing from group 1 will be the most economical and choosing group 3 or 4 will be an increase in quality, choices and cost. We chose to do upgrades on countertops and backsplash, but kept it basic with the cabinets. Before getting into those details, we also chose to upgrade to their grand kitchen layout which gave us more cabinet space in general, longer/higher cabinets and a larger island. That upgrade specifically was $5,000. Upgrading the countertops (highly recommend to avoid inevitably upgrading just a few years down the road) increased the cost by $3,000 making the total cost $11,000 (keep in mind though it’s a big kitchen; I’m not sure what the cost per square foot was exactly). And upgrading the backsplash added just around $200 making the total cost around $900. What we did during our initial meetings was chose everything we would ever want in a home and then started focusing on our ‘must have’ list versus our ‘nice to have list’ to get to the price range we were comfortable being in. Hope that helps a little! If you’re really interested in building, definitely just start visiting builders to get a good idea on floor plans, high level cost, etc! Good luck with everything 🙂

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