My Scandinavian Minimalist Kitchen

It's time for my Fall in Love Room reveal.  I'm so happy with how far we've come with the kitchen in the past six weeks.  There are still a few things we need to finish and/or adjust, but I think you can get a good sense of how it looks.  The couple things that are missing are on order and we will be receiving the floating shelf that will go next to the uppers sometime this week.  Just a little too late for this reveal so I may have to take some updated photos a little later.  The kitchen turned out just how I hoped it would and I think it reflects the minimal Scandinavian look I was going for.  This is going to be another photo loaded post today, but since we've been working on this kitchen renovation since March.  I think it warrants an excess of photos.


Before, I get into more of the photos of our new kitchen here's a reminder of what the kitchen looked like when we first viewed our house (the house was tenanted previously).  I actually kind of liked these cabinets, but it was SO impractical.  The counters were so low that they had cut a hole into the floor to fit a dishwasher.

This is our first renovation of the kitchen.  My mom is still deciding whether she will end up taking these cabinets to use in her kitchen or whether she would like a DIY custom one like our new kitchen.  We'll definitely reuse the Caeserstone counters though.  This first renovation was a temporary kitchen.  We hacked together some off the shelf cabinets mixed with Ikea cupboards.  I think it looked okay, but the work triangle with the fridge on the other side of the island really didn't function well in a busy kitchen and that's what initially spurred the renovation.  I initially had asked the hubs to help me rearrange the location of the appliances and it somehow escalated into a complete renovation.  One of the main reasons for this was that we were able to get fully custom plywood cabinets with birch drawers and top of the line hardware for same price as or less than Ikea by designing everything ourselves and having a CNC make the cabinets and buying the drawers directly from a woodworker.  The best and worst part of doing it this way was that we could design everything ourselves.  I'm very good at coming up with ideas and designs, but can also be SO indecisive.

Here is the second version of our kitchen.  We added a walkout to a new deck, flipped the island around, moved the range to the former pantry wall and put a built-in fridge and pantries on the former range wall.

So now that you have the background on our kitchen escapades, here are all the detail photos.  I'm hoping to write another post that will show you some of the actual cabinet details (i.e., how we placed drawers, shelves, and a coffee nook into the pantries, the design of the cabinet doors, building in the fridge, etc.) later on.

I have a love hate relationship with this stove.  I love how it functions.  The dual fuel range is great for baking and cooking, but man is it ever clunky!  I really tried to find something a little more streamlined, but no one could guarantee that another range would work as well and Wolf only has wall ovens that are more modern.  The wall oven did not work for an under the cooktop installation as the door would have hit the floor when open.  It also seemed super wasteful to replace this range with the same oven just for looks.  We were able to build our lower cabinets a little deeper so that it stuck out much less.  Maybe I'll try and find some black knobs to replace the red ones.

This is the spot that's awaiting the shelf.  I ended up putting up the Ikea Ranarp sconce for now while we wait to see how the shelf looks in place.  I didn't want to do the junction box until the shelf is in place and we determine just the right spot for it.  I also reused this art I made awhile ago.  Again, that will likely be replaced in due time.  For now, I kind of like this cute little sconce and art pair.

These salt and pepper grinders along with a couple black knives (seen further down) were my Mother's Day gifts and I've patiently waited to use them until our kitchen was close enough to being done.

I'm still getting used to not seeing the mammoth stainless steel panel of the built-in fridge.  We waited a long time for the panels that are in place now.

This faucet is the real deal.  It's a classic and so well built.  I wanted to show you that it doesn't have a vegetable spray, but tilts so that you can clean every part of the sink.  The sink is a single bowl with very tight radius corners and an adjustable metal grate.

This is a print I got for the boys' room, but it somehow ended up here.  I'm liking it there for now especially with the Marimekko fabric/curtain next to it.  I've made some changes to our dining room over the past little while and will have to share that with you too.

 Just a pic to show you the view out the new French Doors.  Our neighbours have a forest in their city backyard and if you look carefully you can get a glimpse of the DIY cable railings on the deck.  We were able to save thousands by buying a sample set of doors that were used at a Home Show.  The colour on the exterior is not quite what I had in mind and I'll likely be painting them at some point.

The door to the basement stairs.  You can also see that we didn't finish patching the floor where we took out one of the small walls framing the opening to the kitchen.  It's on the honey do list.

Tech Guy really wanted the counter stools to stay.  I wanted to add some more cabinets.  You can see who won.

Finally, here's the view from the outside in.  We have a couple steps down to the main deck since the other back door is a couple of steps down from the kitchen (it's the one you can see in our mini mudroom).  You can also see that we ended up with in-swinging french doors since we didn't really have a choice when buying a sample set.  They work okay though since they swing fully flat against the interior walls.  Our window and door friend also said that this type of door is more weather tight for a home in Canada with our cold winters.

So that's my so close to being completely finished kitchen.  I hope you like it!  I'll try and get the sources for everything listed for you in another post.  I think this post is long enough already!  You might be surprised at how we sourced all these high end finishes and appliances at a fraction of the cost.  Thanks again to those of you who have been patiently waiting to see this kitchen renovation come together.  We're so close!

Don't forget to check out all the other great Fall in Love Room reveals happening all this week!

Monday

Decor and the Dog

Home + Style Report

Dwellings by Devore

A Home Full of Color

Tuesday

Shift Ctrl Art

Go Haus Go

The Gathered Home

The Thriftress

Wednesday

Primitive & Proper

Wills Casa

Nalle's House

Brittany Makes

Number Fifty-Three

Thursday

Boxy Colonial

Bliss at Home

Eleven Gables

Newly Woodwards

The Chronicles of Home