Kitchen Remodel Part 1: Inspiration

We recently remodeled our kitchen and it was such a fun process that I want to share every detail here! This is Part 1 of a four part blog series that will go over the Inspiration, Planning, Remodel, and Reveal of our dream kitchen! I gathered so much inspiration from others blogs, Pinterest, and Instagram and I hope maybe you find something inspiring here too 🙂

We thought about remodeling the kitchen for about 5 years so when the time finally came, we knew exactly how our family used our kitchen and what we wanted to change to make it an effortless, comfortable, and beautiful space that we could continue to enjoy. But where to even start when your plan is to demo the whole thing and start over?! For me, Pinterest and Instagram of course!

Inspirational Images I Pinned

What I love about pinning home design pictures is that when I look back at my Pinterest board, I can start to notice trends of what I keep pinning, which tells me that I must really like that particular trend/style/idea. So I pinned, and I pinned, and I pinned! Here are a few of my favorite kitchens that I drew a lot of inspiration from:

This kitchen by Becki Owens was one of my favorites! It is so dreamy. We ultimately chose a microwave drawer, our seating, and a combination of white and wood cabinetry with clean black hardware based on this beauty of a kitchen!

Jami’s kitchen hooked me on the combination of white cabinetry with a darker wood. I also love how she had a section of her kitchen dedicated to function/prep (which inspired us to use our little wall for the fridge and two big pantry closets on each side which I will show you in Part 2!). Also love her farmhouse sink.

Kasey from SBK Living’s kitchen is such goals! I love the contrast of the black island with the white cabinetry, the open shelving on either side of the range/hood, and all that seating! This picture inspired us to include as much seating as we could at our island. I loved seeing those pretty gold details in her kitchen! Those inspired some of the copper accents we ultimately chose 🙂 I also like her quartzite counters which inspired me to explore which material would work well for our home.

I am so in love with Studio McGee’s whole kitchen – the dark wood, the metals, the stunning backsplash but the detail that I totally needed in my kitchen is the little mini shelves on each side of the hood with the art lighting above (I actually ended up ordering the same light they used just in a smaller size/different finish I loved it so much).

What I like best about this kitchen from Veranda Estate Homes is, no surprise here…the little open shelves! They just really do it for me! And the rustic weathered wood tones.

And that brings us to the kitchen by Chris Loves Julia that inspired me to go with an IKEA kitchen with Semihandmade custom door fronts! I didn’t know you could do that until I saw this dreamy kitchen but I was hooked after that. I loved the combination of white and wood cabinetry, the simple but unique tile (we went with the exact same one), the appliances with the fancy hardware (I ended up getting the double oven but in stainless steel with copper handles), and just the general vibe. This feels like a kitchen that is beautiful but can handle the day to day life of a young family – pretty, not too fancy, functional, with its own unique spin!

Mood Boards I Created

Now that I had plenty of inspiration to guide me, I sat down and thought about what features were must-haves in my own kitchen and created my own mood boards. One thing I learned during this process was that just because I thought a particular kitchen was perfection, it didn’t mean it would necessarily work with my own home. Our homes have their own style, architecture, and function so while I loved some of the more formal and elegant kitchens I saw online, that really wouldn’t fit the vibe of my house at all.

I also needed to figure out a more functional layout for our kitchen – more details about that in the Part 2 post but just to clarify for the below mood boards I’ll share with you, I separated my kitchen into 3 sections: the little wall, the big wall, and the island.

I love a good mood board! Canva is my favorite website to use and it really helps me get my thoughts together and visually see my vision on “paper.” Yes I printed these out for my contractor 🙂 I got a lot of helpful feedback from my social media friends and armed with some exciting ideas, I moved onto the Planning phase – stay tuned for that post soon!