All of us have been spending a lot of time at home and with family these days. Most of yall are familiar with our family but if you’re not, here is a quick overview. I’ve been married to my beautiful bride, Anna, for almost 11 years. We’ve got a fun story if you haven’t heard about how we met, check out this short video. We have four children: Hallie (8) Max (6) Sam (4) Ford (2), pictured below.
Anna is an identical twin and her twin, Aimee Flores, also has four children that are nearly identical ages to ours. Pictured below.
The twins are very identical in many ways and have always been very close. We love having families with kids so close in age. In an effort to continue to foster our families relationships my family jumped at the opportunity to move within walking distance of the Flores family. We now live about 100 yards from each other and ironically share the main street in the neighborhood called Twingate ;-)
We moved into the home in January of 2020. Just as we were getting settled the COVID-19 virus mess hit. The shelter in place and economic shutdowns have affected and challenged all of us in different ways. For my family spending more time at home has helped us get settled and allow us time to do some renovations. As an architectural rep I get to see some the projects my designers are working on so I figured it would be fun to share some of our projects with my designers.
Renovations
Our home has great bones but just needed some updating to freshen up the space. We wanted to tackle the main living areas of the home as that's where we spend the majority of time.
Kitchen
For this post we'll focus on the kitchen updates. The existing kitchen, pictured below, was certainly functional but we felt we could change the layout to optimize usage and flow.
It ended up being pretty much a total gut job. As we considered the layout for the new kitchen one of the main areas we wanted to change was leveling out the two stepped island and relocating the range so we had a large working space for preparing and serving meals.
Having a family of six, we do a lot of cooking and we wanted a fun place to be able to gather around. Beyond that we wanted built in trash and recycling as well as more drawers and some open shelving. One of the nice things about the space is the 14 ft high ceilings and large arched window.
We felt using a white subway tile and going all the way up to the top would really highlight these features. There are so many options when it comes to kitchen design and deciding on a look Anna and I agreed upon was a process. However, we finally settled in on our inspiration then modified the design to our personal liking. We decided on a light gray for the cabinet color and ultimately ended up using Sherwin Williams Repose Gray. It's just the perfect tone and shade.
The millworker, Semso 404-625-6372, we contracted to produce the cabinets did a really nice job. If you are in the Atlanta area and need a good millworker Ive provided his contact Semso custom built all the frames from a high grade multiply plywood. He was great to work with and brought us in at all the right steps to ensure the cabinets were just how we wanted them.
All the drawer boxes have dovetail joints and soft close slides.
For countertops, we wanted the look of white marble but because of the soft and porous nature of that stone we didn’t want to actually use marble. So we ended up using a Calacatta Botanica Quartz as we could get a similar look but superior performance. The tops are a bright white with subtle gray veins and were installed by B & M Stone here in Atlanta. Anna and I both always wanted a farm sink.
We ended up going with a ceramic sink from Mazi 30” x 20” x 8-¾”. I’ve always had a double bowl sink and really love the large single bowl. Our inspiration kitchen had gold hardware which really looked nice with the light gray cabinets and white countertops. Amazon proved to be quite an affordable and useful option for our hardware and faucets. We used the same gold hardware handles for both the doors and drawers to keep a nice consistency.
The gold hardware matched well with the gold faucet and gold sconces we selected. These days there are so many variations of gold we were concerned about them matching.
We encourage ordering samples to ensure finish consistency.
The large island demanded good sized pendant fixtures. This was one item we struggled selecting but feel we ended up with a good open weave rattan dome from Pottery Barn.
For the open shelving I used a 2x12 pine board from home depot and drilled pocket holes to attach to the studs. Then I fabricated from the finish cladding from 9/16” thickness pre-finished Parklex Dry Internal, in the color Country Oak. I really love this species and color tone of the wood, not to mention it's the most durable real wood product you can get your hands on.
We wanted six compact bar stools to accommodate our whole family. Anna did a great job choosing these bar stools from target.
The final aspect of the kitchen renovation was the addition of two large pantry cabinets. These have proved to be one of the best upgrades we did. They look great and provide so much storage space.
We hope you’ve enjoyed learning more about our family and kitchen renovations. There will be future posts about the other areas we renovated. Hopefully the links and info are helpful. Blessings.