We share easy interior design ideas for creating a modern built-in banquette or bench seating for an eat-in kitchen featuring upholstered cushions from our upholstery repair department.
Read MoreWell, I can't believe it. Our kitchen is actually done. Done, I say! It's been so long, I'm ashamed for you to look back to see the date of the "before" kitchen post.
Okay. It was April 30th.
So that means the kitchen's been about six months in the making. Now to be completely fair, our kitchen has been functional since mid July, but the "finishing touches" took nearly as long as the bulk of the demo/installation. But whatever. It was our first renovation and we went at it without a general contractor and it's done now, so who cares if it took six months? Who's even counting, right? (I can say that now that it's over, because I did care. I was the crazy woman counting!).
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Home updates. Sometimes you get stuck. There are a hundred reasons why, but my reason is that I've lived in my little bungalow for just over seven years. The very first thing my husband and I did when we moved in was take off the doors on our upper cabinets in the kitchen. Our intention was to replace the cabinets with several rows of open shelves. It remains as it did on day one, now on day 2,653.
This, my friends, is the first installment of the epic tale of my kitchen's coming of age.
Our kitchen is small; if you want to say it nicely, you'd call it sweet. I think the biggest mistake we made in home-buying was getting a house with the washer and dryer in the kitchen. Call me an American, but this feels innately incorrect. I am, however, happy it's not in the garage like so many of our neighbors' homes. I'd probably never do laundry then. That said, over the years, I keep telling myself people all over the world have washer/dryers in their kitchens. The kitchen, at heart, is a utilitarian room, and it could make sense to have clothes washing machines in there. The ones we have are just so big. Incredibly nice, but so so big.
Beyond the washer/dryer dilemma, there are other things we don't love that become increasingly bummery over the years. 1. We're not fans of the black and white tile. Hard to clean. Not quite our personal look. 2. The whole room feels cut off from the rest of the house. My husband is the cook, and it feels a bit like he is my servant locked away making my meals in a secluded room. I want him to feel really good about making my meals, so it'd be ideal for the kitchen to feel like a palace for him and his great skillz.
We keep discussing how to move the fridge here and tear down a wall there and get a washer/dryer combo machine to reduce its large footprint–maybe a smaller fridge? Maybe put the appliances on a different wall? What happens when we tear out this set of cabinets–we'll have to replace the entire floor, right? Yikes.
When we heard that Ashley Palmer was going to talk to Ashley Whiteside about a ground-up renovation of her kitchen, we got excited about the idea of someone else telling us what to do. We've had too many ideas over the course of too many years to make a decision. And furthermore, while I do interior styling for a living, I do not specialize in kitchen spaces where so much need for exactness and technical placement is required. So we gave friend and interior designer Ashley Whiteside all our thoughts and hopes and dreams and a link to our kitchen Pinterest board.
“We’ve had too many ideas over the course of too many years to make a decision. ”
Ashley Palmer and I have found that the people who approach us to do interior work in their homes are surprising people because they seem stylish and have their stuff together, but the truth is, we all need a hand sometimes. And if you need a hand, the owner of that hand should be named Ashley. Just kidding. But really, it's a great name. And us three Ashleys are great gals. Hope you're excited to follow along as we take our meal-prepping rooms to the next level.
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