New Kitchen Reveal!

Welcome in! It's okay, be nosy and take a look around.

I am so happy and grateful to be able to write this post! Our kitchen is FINALLY DONE! It’s been nearly finished for a few weeks now but we’ve been waiting on the last few details, like installing the ceiling light trims, before officially saying construction is over. Our house feels so warm and breezy and I just freaking love it. It has been such an inspiring place to work in and it feel amazing to be able to host our friends here.

I’ve been getting a lot messages about our kitchen regarding the design and construction process and product specifications so I’m going to try my best to answer the most common questions. If you’re curious about anything please ask away in the comments!

The kitchen before! Which includes our smaller and older kitchen space and the sun porch/laundry room behind it.

The Space We Started With

To give some context, above are some photos of what our kitchen space looked like before. We bought our home in 2020 with the intention of renovating it, so it was important for use to find a house that had not yet been flipped (what a waste it would be to tear everything out). This was the perfect house for us. It was built in 1924 and has so much original charm. The kitchen was small and plain but easily workable for a few years while we saved up for our big renovation.

The moment we saw this house Reuben and I had the same vision of tearing down the wall that separated the kitchen and the sun porch/laundry room behind it so that the kitchen could look out over the yard and bring in all that natural daylight. We also wanted to open up the wall between the kitchen and dining room so it would feel open and connected.

We moved out of the house and started construction in March 2023, but before that my husband had spent the year leading up to it working on the design, specifying materials and products, and also coordinating with our contractors. Finding a contractor can be very tricky. We interviewed 2 different teams and ultimately went with Ayala Construction. They worked on a coworker’s home renovation, lived in the neighborhood, and were so nice and personable when we walked through the project together. Now that the project is done we are so happy with our experience with them and can’t recommend them enough! So if you’re in the Bay Area and have a project coming up, you should definitely talk to Jose and Eduardo!

Renderings of the kitchen! I think it ended up being pretty spot on!

The Design

To be honest, I had very little input on the design because Reuben does this for a living, as a high-end residential architect, and he just new what would look good in the space and function the best for me and my work. I just had a few requests…

1. A dutch door to the back porch (so I can live out my cottage-core dreams)

2. A colorful range

3. The best dishwasher out there (I’ve never had a dishwasher before!)

4. A spot for displaying my favorite cookbooks

Reuben delivered on all of these.

Reuben’s designed opened up the walls like we have always planned for. The overall palette is quite simple: White oak, brass, and white quartz and marble. My goal is add more color and personality with art, books, ceramics, and florals! I love how the design feels fresh and new but still timeless and naturally fits into our California craftsman. There’s definitely a Scandinavian vibe with some Japanese accents. At night especially with the pendant lights on, it feels like we’re eating at a trendy Japanese sushi counter haha.

The Specs!

Millwork: For our cabinets, we went with a hybrid solution to save on some money while getting a high quality custom look. The boxes are from Granite Expo, which is local to the Bay Area, and they are affordable and much better quality than something from Ikea. We requested maple interior boxes and the doors that came with them are paint-grade white, but we only used the white doors for our cabinet uppers. We then got custom American white oak cabinet doors from Walnut and Oak, which is a custom fabricator out of Washington.

Floors: The kitchen floor is a European white oak from Riva Spain. They are beautiful and easy to clean! I just need to make sure Olive doesn’t zoomie too hard on them haha.

Appliances:

The full height panel-ready refrigerator is from Fisher and Paykel and then we also have a second under-counter fridge from KitchenAid. Why do we have two fridges? Well, with a panel ready full-heigh fridge the depth is not as deep as a regular fridge because it has to fit the depth of typical cabinets, meaning you lose a little capacity. We also wanted a second fridge because Reuben collects a lot of beer and I didn’t want that taking up space in the main fridge. Having a second fridge is such a luxury and I love that it even fits a whole sheet pan in there and can hold extra groceries. This came in handy when I shooting my cookbook!

Dishwasher is from Miele and I couldn’t love it more. This is my first dishwasher EVER and my life is forever changed.

The range is the KitchenAid Commercial-style Range in Avocado Cream. So far it has been amazing and the color make so happy whenever I look at it! If you want one of the custom colors like this one then prepare for a long lead time!

Hardware was a combination of Rejuvenation and Baldwin Brass Hardware. We picked an aged brass or non-lacquered brass so they would darken and patina over time. It also matches the original hardware in other parts of the house. I didn’t want to look at too much hardware so we went with bar pulls for appliances and knob pulls for all other cabinets.

Our range hood is from Proline and I’m really glad we went with a hidden approach so all we see is a clean white volume over the range! I can finally cook steaks without setting off the smoke detector.

Those are all the major ones! If you see something you like and want to know where I got it, just ask!

What I Love About The Kitchen

Can we just talk about the beams for a moment? We obviously knew that they were in there but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with them. Should we paint them? Stain them? or just clean them up a bit? I’m glad that we left them as they were and just dusted and sanded them. I think they add so much character to the kitchen. I just got some Christmas garland and I’m going to wrap them around a few beams this season! We started growing a pothos on the otherwise (above the pantry cabinet) and maybe in a few years we’ll see it start to wrap around a beam!

Storage. Storage. Storage. I have a lot of kitchen stuff and I’m not the most organized but having ample storage space has done wonders for my ADHD and overall stress levels in the kitchen. This is the only shot of inside a cabinet for now because it is still very much a work in progress. Don’t judge the clutter… just appreciate how this cabinet wasn’t staged.

The overall flow of the kitchen, in terms of it being a workspace for me is just so efficient. I have more counter space then I have ever had. Most of the time I prep at the peninsula and our trash pull out is right underneath so I can easily open it and throw my scraps into the compost. It’s so satisfying. My cooking tools and favorite pots and pans are right by the range and I have a dedicated drawer for noodles (everything feels right ).

Most of all, I love how our house feels so warm and inviting. The kitchen is the perfect place to host pizza night, cook a long and slow Sunday dinner, and spend time with our favorite people. I’m so grateful to have this space and I want to share more of it with you! I think I just reached my newsletter length limit, so I might have to do a few more posts, like “Ask the Architect” Or "What I Wish I Knew Before Renovating”. Again, let me know if there’s anything specific you want me to cover!