One Room Challenge Guest | Week Five

Hi There!  Welcome back to week 5 of my One Room Challenge update.  If you want to catch up on where this room started, you can find all the details in these posts: Week One,  Week Two, Week Three and Week Four.  Crazy to think this is coming to an end already!  But really glad to have this room finished and this was just what we needed to get it done.  We have an extremely busy week next week, so I need to finish everything and photograph it this weekend.  I'm a little stress about that, since Sunday will be my last day to take any pictures during the day.  Editing and writing the post can happen in the evenings, but my last free day of daylight is Sunday.  Yikes! 

Anyways, on to today's progress post.

Backsplash

The backsplash is done and turned out great!  Really happy we went with the classic subway tile.  Here's a peek at our new backsplash.

Under Cabinet Lighting

We also put in new under cabinet lighting which is amazing!  I never realized how great this would be until after we put these lights in our first house.  It makes a huge difference in which workspace you can use.  We had a couple of dark corners that I never used until the under cabinets lights were installed.  And of course, it looks really awesome at night when they are turned on.  We used three 36 inch direct wire under cabinet lights.  You can see below how they really mount nicely under the cabinet and blend right in.  They operate by a wall switch, but you also have the option to turn them off individually with a switch on each light.

Roman Shade

Our Roman Shade is up and looks so good!  I was a little worried about this purchase as I bought this off ebay.  It's the exact same Pottery Barn shade but more then half off because it's a return.  Also when it arrived it was more of an ivory color which had me worried as well.  But once it was hung between the white cabinets it took on more of a bright white color and looked perfect!

Counter Stools

My favorite purchase and our only splurge for this space were these Serena and Lily counter stools.  I LOVE them!!  I sold our RH counter stools with the backs for a couple of reasons.  First, the color.  They were a dark expresso color and we are going with lighter woods in this home.  Also having a dark countertop, they just didn't work.  Second, the size.  We had three in our old home, but only two fit at our island in this house.  The backs and arms were really getting in the way.  I know having a back is much more comfortable and for small children it's great, but because of the size of our kitchen, they were taking up too much space.  The island is small and the side where the bulky barstools sat made it hard to use if I wanted to set up food because you had to reach over the backs.  So these are working perfect for us in the this kitchen and I was able to fit three at the island.

Breakfast Pendant

So after much debate, I finally decided to not do pendants above my island.  It will make more sense when you see a larger view of the kitchen on the reveal but here's why.  The island in our kitchen is not centered with the back window, so it was really throwing me off to put two pendants that don't line up symmetrically with the window and cabinets on the back wall.  I know others have done it (I have several pinned) and it looks beautiful, but for me it just wasn't working in my mind.  I think I like things to have symmetry and I just couldn't get past it.  My husband agreed (but maybe only because it was less work for him :)  And another reason is that our kitchen is smaller in size and I just felt like it was too much especially with our stairs close by.  It all became too busy for me.  So, I decided to incorporate the style of pendant I really liked over our breakfast table which is very close to our kitchen.  It will still bring in some touches of gold to the space without over crowding things.  Not sure if that all makes sense, but I think when you see the reveal it will.  I just felt like I was trying to hard to make the island pendants work. 

So I order this light (see below) for our breakfast table which is supposed to arrive today.  I love the look of the Darlana pendant, but there are so many knock off versions that give the same look for a whole lot less cost.  This one has been in and out of stock, so I signed up for the alert and ordered right away when it came back in stock.  I purchased the vintage gold in the medium size.

And just to review...here is my plan for this space and what we have completed thus far:

• paint the cabinets - Benjamin Moore Simply White
• paint the walls - PPG Palomino Gray
• replace hardware with gold pulls
• new cabinet hinges and new drawer rollers
• new electric outlets
• replace the backsplash
• replace outlet covers
• trim out the window
• replace the blinds with a roman shade
• under cabinet lighting
• move light above the sink to the wall
• new light above the sink
• replace light in breakfast room
• maybes - new faucet, new barstools and chairs for breakfast area

Looking this list above, the only items that probably won't happen are:  the light above the sink and new chairs for the breakfast area.  And those two things are not biggies for me and can still happen down the road.  I have been looking quite a bit for a small pendant to hang over the sink in the same spot where the recessed light currently is located, but no luck.  I didn't want to rush buying something I didn't like, so I'm waiting.  If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear! 

This kitchen has come a long way and is so much more our style with the other changes we made.  I'm still hoping to get a faucet this weekend, but we'll see.  Wish me luck on photographing.  It's a tight squeeze to get it done with good day light, but I'm hopeful!  Hope to see you back next week for the reveal!!