We did a kitchen remodel over five years ago but did it all out of order! And the process all started from wanting a farmhouse sink…

Back in 2015, I fell in love with farmhouse sinks.

And I thought it would be easy enough to just take out my standard stainless steel sink, cut the granite countertops I had at the time, throw that farmhouse sink right in and call it a day :).

But that didn’t happen quite as planned.

Please excuse the old blurry photos – I had no idea that years later I would start a blog and want to share my mistakes with all of you!

I.E. – I documented very little of this process and of course did not worry so much about my photography skills back then ;0!

This post was originally written in October 2020 and since that time, my kitchen has been changed even more! You can read about the 2022 changes we made to our kitchen in this post.

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In a rush?

But First – The Before Photos

I figure I should show you a couple of before pictures just so you know what we were working with back in 2015:

1) A Farmhouse Sink and New Faucet

The farmhouse sink that started it all was easy enough for my handyman and plumber to install.

The problem wasn’t with the sink.

The problem was what the sink set into motion with all the changes that came after ;).

2) White Subway Tile Backsplash

A farmhouse sink is set forward quite a bit more than a regular kitchen sink is.

This means there would be a space behind the farmhouse sink without any countertop.

Resourceful me thought- well why don’t I change out my granite backsplash and use a piece of that to add to the space behind my new farmhouse sink.

So we did that and changed our brown speckled granite backsplash to be white subway tile.

You can find the farmhouse sink we chose here and the faucet here.

But when I stood back and looked at my beautiful new white backsplash- it didn’t quite look right with the rest of the materials in my kitchen.

3) Painted the Island Cabinets White

I painted the island white (Frazee – now Sherwin Williams – White Shadow) and added shiplap to the sides of it.

But I was still not happy with how it was looking 🤪.

4) Added Shiplap to the Cabinet Sides and the Stove Hood

So we decided to add shiplap to our stove hood.

And I was STILL NOT HAPPY with how the kitchen looked!!

5) Added Open Shelves and Glass Cabinet Doors

Then the next step I took was to remove the cabinets to the left of the stove and replace with open shelves (which I LOVE btw – you can find them here!) and change the doors to the upper cabinets on the right to be glass.

6) Tiled to the Ceiling

But by adding the open shelves, we needed to add more subway tile to my already in place backsplash that we had done the month before.

So we decided to go all the way to the ceiling with this change… another change that I am so happy we made!

We also added pendant lights over the island and changed the light over the sink.

Ask me if I was happy with how it was looking yet though… the answer is still nope.

7) Changed the Island Countertops to Soapstone

Next attempt I made to make it all flow was to change the island countertop to black soapstone.

My review on this material btw is that I LOVE IT!

When I went to the Arizona Tile warehouse to pick it out- they had a whole slap lying around for the clearance price of $740!!!

I seriously spent a solid 45 minutes with the salesperson in disbelief (he was too fyi!).

We both inspected the slab multiple times and came to the conclusion that it got shoved to the back of the pile where no one ever noticed it was there so the price finally dropped to get rid of it!

I felt so lucky that day as normally that slab would have been around $2000!

It is so insanely durable and smooth.

It does have a few chips in it from us with our everyday use of it but I am okay with that.

I have read if that bothers you the chips can easily be sanded out (but I haven’t tried this yet!).

Then I took another step back and took lots of photos.

And decided welp- now the perimeter countertops do not look good.

My new soapstone had a crisp sharp edge and my old granite had a bullnose edge so even that alone just looked wonky to me.

8) Replaced the Perimeter Countertops with Lyra Quartz

Sooooo, we replaced the perimeter counters with white quartz (which of course I wasn’t so lucky to find a clearance slab for).

The style of our quartz is called Lyra.

When replacing the perimeter countertops, I decided to add a beautiful focal point feature to my kitchen with a Wolf Range.

Now obviously this was a HUGE splurge- but we do a lot of hosting around the holidays.

And we decided we would enjoy using and looking at this appliance so much that the cost was worth it to us.

I have zero regrets with this decision!

9) Painted the Perimeter Cabinets

And yet the big kitchen remodel STILL DIDN’T LOOK RIGHT TO ME!!

I should let you know that the date is now September 2017 (remember we started with the sink back in March 2015 😳).

I was really hesitant to paint my lower cabinets because I have always loved the warmth that wood brings to a room- especially in a kitchen!

But in the end, in September 2019, I made the decision to paint the lowers a light gray (Sherwin Williams Mindful Gray).

And I have found other ways to incorporate wood in my kitchen to keep the warmth that I so love.

Thank you for reading my post on how we did a kitchen remodel but in a backwards way.

I hope it is helpful to you in planning your own kitchen remodel and that maybe you learned from my mistakes.

Obviously in the end, it all worked out aesthetically but I imagine it would have been a heck of a lot easier if we hadn’t had to make so many changes along the way.

And it all began with a kitchen sink…

Home is where one starts from.

~ T.S. Eliot

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Have a wonderful day my friend! I hope something makes you smile today ;).