One Room Challenge: A Kitchen Remodel (Week 1)

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One Room Challenge

I can’t believe its October already and time for the fall edition of One Room Challenge. Calling it Home has been hosting the ever inspiring One Room Challenge for many seasons now. I happened to find out from my amazing Design group ‘Design Er-Therapy’ last season and just loved participating in it. This challenge drives design creativity and perfect project management resulting in a lot of thrill and excitement (with plenty of emotion) along the way – you have to make every day count to get it all done in 5 weeks!

 I had so much fun doing a makeover of my daughter’s room during the spring challenge that I decided to undertake another project to showcase for this challenge. Why stop there … I also increased the difficulty level from a kid’s bedroom to a kitchen. Not just any kitchen, my own kitchen and it’s the first time I am ever remodeling one and in 5 weeks at that! It sounds like a crazy thought but I have had plenty of time to think about this as I have been waiting to initiate this project for a long time. Long lead time items like appliances have already been secured but this is truly going to test my designer skills.

The Kitchen today

This is a large kitchen 11' x 18’ room so there is plenty of space with large cabinets, a big center island, large counter tops and a tile backsplash. We want to keep as much of the existing wood cabinets (great quality), keep the existing floor and the floor design. So the re-modeling requirements are to upgrade the appliances and make it look like a contemporary kitchen.

What are the options...

The floor plan shows the dimensions of the kitchen. My idea is to create a virtual split so we can ultimately use the open space to add a kitchen dining area and accessorize with nice lighting fixtures and an accent wall.

After many iterations of the design, we have decided to take out all the warm dark color in the kitchen and replace it to make the kitchen a bright and contemporary color. That decision will eventually lead us to debate the color and material of the back-splash and the counter-tops or even changing the flooring as well. The unique color of the floor does not leave me with a lot of choices but we are going to go and look at marble, quartz and quartzite to replace the existing granite and tie it all together. At the same time, we have to look for options for the existing limestone back-splash. This is going to be a fun exercise over the next week. Here is a rendering of one of the options I am exploring – A White contemporary kitchen!! (Give me your thoughts below)

What it could look like -

Thanks so much to Linda from Calling It Home for hosting this challenge that is making my house gorgeous room by room. Make sure you click over to the One Room Challenge page to see everyone that is playing along this round. I am really excited about this project and look forward to sharing more with you over the next few weeks. Oh.....don't forget to leave me your comments, questions and feedback because they really inspire us and others.

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