Our DIY IKEA Kitchen Renovation

Hi, hello, welcome! Although I’ve still been serving clients by helping them create cozy and functional homes, I have been pretty quiet on the blog for the past couple years (#raisingbabies). But today I have a project that I am so excited about and has too many fun details to live just on Instagram… our kitchen renovation! (All sources are linked at the bottom of the post.)

My husband, Brian, and I took on renovating our kitchen over the past few months, and I’m here to say that it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. It probably helps that Brian is super knowledgable, incredibly determined, and an eager learner. Never done backsplash before? Not a problem! We’ll just google it and then try three times until we get it right! (That was certainly the worst part.)

After living with our 1960’s kitchen for a few years, we felt like now was the time to pull the trigger on a project we had been excited about since we bought this house. With Brian currently working from home and our schedules pretty free, it just made sense to dive in. We’re so happy with how it turned out, and I’m thrilled to get to share it with you!

We went with IKEA cabinets, both for their price and their DIY nature. I’m pretty sure the ordering process would’ve been a breeze pre-Covid, but alas, we’re in a pandemic, which made things more complicated. Let’s just say we finally received everything over a number of months through a series of multiple trips to the store, close to ten home deliveries, and a 10-hour road trip to the Wisconsin IKEA. Oof! But we finally got all our pieces and are extremely pleased with the end result. We went with dark blue base cabinets and white for the uppers to keep things light.

We were able to snag new stainless steel appliances from a scratch and dent sale that my brother had connections to this past spring, so that really helped with the cost of the whole renovation. We did all the work ourselves (backsplash, cabinets, electrical, etc.), minus installing the countertop and under mount sink which were done by a team from Home Depot, where the countertop is from.

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Speaking of sinks, after much deliberation we landed on doing a large stainless steel under mount sink and I couldn’t be happier. We waffled back and forth between white ceramic and stainless steel, but decided on the latter based on the design of the rest of the kitchen.

We don’t do many hand dishes, which is why we opted for the single basin, as well as the roll-out dish drying rack. I love not having a rack taking up counter space! We just roll this one out every day or two when we have a few pots or pans to wash.

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We had been wanting a speaker in our kitchen to listen to tunes while we cook, and since we already had a google home mini in our living room, we went with the google home nest. We LOVE it! Not only is it a speaker, but it shows off our family photos, answers questions I have while cooking (“how many tablespoons in a cup?”), and we can even watch our live stream church or television shows on it! Definitely recommend it.

We decided to hang one open shelf on the wall to the right of the sink to keep it feeling nice and open near the countertop seating and to allow space for bigger art. I love the Scripture print we have on the shelf now, but am excited to try out other large-scale art there as well.

I love the lighting that we went with! I feel like it fits the mid-century vibes of our home while still feeling fresh and modern. Doing the lighting in all matte black helped so many different lights still feel cohesive and kept things from getting too busy. We also added under-cabinet lights, and our kitchen is so much brighter now… it makes a huge difference!

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One feature that we were able to add to our new kitchen that I adore is having some seating up at the counter. We have two barstools that allow people to sit and chat with whoever is working in the kitchen. I’m sitting here now, and have actually started having our daughters (1.5 and 2 years old) sit there for snack time, which feels like such a special treat to them. It has made our kitchen feel much more accessible to the rest of the house (and the fact that we removed a small wall between the kitchen and dining room helps with that too!).

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I love that we opted for glass doors on the cabinet near our sink. It gives us a place to show off some of our special and pretty dishes, while giving us plenty of space for the everyday dishes and tupperware in our closed cabinets on the other side.

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Before & After

Technically, these before photos are from when we moved in four years ago. We ended up doing a small kitchen makeover our first year here, so you can see that makeover and what our kitchen looked like before this big renovation here. But I just had to share where we started when we bought the house compared to now! It’s night and day.

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Thanks so much for stopping by and taking a peek at our new space! I have to say that it is an absolute dream to cook in here, and I can’t wait to be able to open it up to more people to enjoy hopefully in the near future.

What did I miss? What are you curious about? Would you guys like to see the insides of the cabinets and how everything is organized? Maybe I’ll share that on Instagram. If you want to see the whole renovation process, I documented everything on Instagram stories and have two highlights over there!

P.S. If you’re new here, take a look around! I provide home styling services (and am currently running a few holiday deals!) and offer resources for your home (most of them are free!).

P.P.S. Like my photos? I edited them with one click on my phone using these photo presets! (I used the neutral and warm pack.)

Sources

Cabinets
Cabinet Doors
Countertop
Backsplash
Sink
Faucet
Overhead Lights
Pendant Light
Shelf Brackets
Cabinet Hardware
Barstools
Dish Rack