E-Haus: Kitchen Cabinets

Hello.

I love you.

You are everything.

I have an iPhone note from 2013 where Nate and I outlined all of our big dreams for a future home. Besides tall ceilings (check!) and an open floor plan (double check), I wrote out three details that we knew wouldn't be able to happen for years and years: a tuxedo kitchen, wall ovens, and a big gas cooktop. Nate and I love to cook and we love to entertain, but we were never able to do it easily in our 1950s ranch. 

Though there will be more updates to come in future months and years, I am in love with our starting point at E-Haus. So much so that I literally squealed when we walked in and besides drywall everywhere (which in and of itself feels like a massive upgrade!), we have a good start on our kitchen. 

The judgy part of my brain is all kinds of frustrated with our not-ceiling height cabinets, but the upcharge wasn't feasible at this point and one of the reasons that we chose painted white uppers was for the ease of customizing them. So some cabinet customization is for sure in our DIY future.

On the opposite side of the kitchen is our window and no upper cabinets at all because we're also building some white oak or walnut floating shelves to warm up our otherwise stark color palette in here (I love it, but light gray walls + black and white cabinets + white quartz + stainless hood and appliances = stark) and to also tie in the dark hardwood floors that will be all over our main level. 

In the meantime, I will be drooling all over this kitchen exactly as it is. 

See you later. 

I love you.

You are everything.

Countertops: White, Whiter, and Whitest

The one finish decision that we came into this house with was our countertops. I have forever loved white counters-- marble in particular-- and have told Nate from day one that someday, I was going to have a kitchen with them.

Unfortunately, real life intervened at some point and while I don't need everything in my life to be pristine forever, we are not in a stage of life where we could baby marble the way it needs to be, and so it would inevitably end up stained/ etched/ pitted almost immediately. I have heard that you can have it refinished every year or every few years, but that sounds a) like a pain and b) like something I am not going to have time for in the coming few decades.

So, alternative white countertops is where I started. And I almost immediately moved away from granite options, because even the lightest of those don't look anything like I've imagined. Ultimately, it seems like there are just a few alternative countertop options that might work us:

Corian Rain Cloud:

Cambria Torquay:

Caesarstone Misty Carrera:

Caesarstone Frosty Carrina:

There are lots of other options that I came across, but I am finding myself feeling pickier and pickier and too many of the others were either super speckled or too contrasty for my taste. Today, of the materials above, I'd go with one of the Caesarstone options, but also we haven't gotten it all priced out yet and I need to see samples in person. There are two hundred million decisions to make when designing a kitchen, but as countertops take up a large amount of visual space and I feel very confident about what I want, we're starting here. Now onto the cabinets.