Oh yeeeeeeaaa! I've been wondering how those awesome red cabs were doing! I keep thinking I'll see them pop up here on a finished kitchen one day, and here they are! You did them proud. What a great space. Vibrant, yet cooly sophisticated. I'll be back to look more tomorrow. My eyes are too tired to appreciate all the details right now. But I did notice that familiar spice drawer. :)

Congratulations on being done!

Me thinks you should be very proud, and very pleased.

What a dramatic before /after contrast!

Wow!
I love red, and the island is gorgeous.
Let's see, love your use of color, layout, cabinets, light fixtures, floors, fireplace, BS and the soapstone.
I may have missed something in my gushing, lol, but seriously, your home is beautiful.

Love the beautiful open kitchen you have done!! Love the cabinets and backsplash!! Love the large island too!!

So is that a beverage fridge under the countertop on the perimeter cabinet side? And a dishwasher in the island?

What a beautiful transformation! Love all the changes, it looks great! Congrats.

Absolutely gorgeous!! How did you wait 6 months to show it off? Do the kids love their new space too? Our kids are young adults now but are home often and I think they're as excited as we are- our renovation grew just like yours did but we are just in month one of the gut/rebuild.

I especially love your soapstone- and the red island gives a perfect personality to the whole space. Thanks for sharing it!

It is so beautiful! I love pretty much everything, you did such a wonderful job putting everything together. I also really like that it looks lived in!

Fabulous!!!

Wow! That's a great kitchen. I love that you have space for the kids' play kitchen too. I'll bet your little ones love to play kitchen while you work in the real one.

Wow! That's a great kitchen. I love that you have space for the kids' play kitchen too. I'll bet your little ones love to play kitchen while you work in the real one.

Who makes that gorgeous Java stain you used on your floors? My monitor resolves it with a grayishness to it. Is that right?

And those pendant lights! WOW!

And red...
Anything red...

Beautiful.
Given the fact this morphed with a "While we're at it.." virus, I'd love to see the rest of the house.

You changed the ENTIRE feel of the place!

Thanks for the kind words!

breezy: I LOVE the spice drawer. One of my favourite GW inspired bits. It gets lots of comments from guests ;)

buckeyemom: yep, beverage fridge at the edge of the perimeter run ... just handy to the backdoor. And DW in the island.

secondhalf: it took 6 months for the tinies to let me have 20 minutes to take photos when the house was (mostly) clean. Managed to snap these while they were both sleeping just before we had some house guests. The stars aligned for that brief moment. I know they like our new space, but mostly I think they're happy that we have a functional fridge (where the milk hides) and that mommy and daddy are less stressed out!

kellienoelle: I can show you lived in ... My kitchen and my house look like this pretty much only in my dreams. And not even really then, since I don't mind that our house is actually lived in. But for perusing "after" shots, I do find it easier to get the sense of things without all the usual chaos so I did my best to eliminate most of the lived-in-ness. Glad it shows through a bit anyway!

CEFreeman: I'm sorry I don't know the brand for the stain, but it was one of the only things chosen on site and I didn't have the presence of mind to pay attention at the time. It does have quite a bit of grey in it - not sure if it's the original floor that lets the grey through, the stain itself or the reflection of the grey from the walls. Maybe a combination of the three. I can probably find out the brand from the guys who redid the floor. Send me an email and remind me next week if I forget.

I bet every time you turn around in your fab kitchen, you're so happy that you did the whole floor reno because it all looks so great together! Really welcoming and I love your color combos.

cheers

What a dramatic change!!!! Your new kitchen is simply gorgeous- I love the red Island and the subtle backsplash! Bravo.

Wow! Just wow!

Your red island, your pendants, your soapstone - just wow!

It looks absolutely amazing. Love your kiddie corner too.

Enjoy!

Congratulations! Beautiful! I love the island and was wondering if you could tell me the dimensions. Also the aisle width between the refrig and island. We will have a very similar layout and may only have 3' 6" in the aisle. Yours also looks a little narrower than the recommended 4'.
Thank you!!

Wow! What a change! I'm not a fan of red in general, but it really works in your kitchen.

LOVE your floors - please share who made the Java stain you used. We have red oak that we're going to be refinishing and your floors look lovely.

laurat88 - the aisle between the island and fridge is 44", the island is 48"x104". We were maxing out the size of the island and scrimped a bit on the aisles, I don't mind it at all. There's more than enough space for how we use the kitchen.

Beautiful!

Wow, that is amazing! Such a transformation...you must be absolutely thrilled. I love looking at it, imagine you must just swoon each time you walk in. It looks like a kitchen that could be featured on Houzz or something!

That's gorgeous! What a transformation! I love your cabinets, the backsplash, the red island, the new layout, the counters --
everything!

Just lovely! Love the new fireplace, too.

What a beautiful kitchen!!!
You are going to enjoy cooking!
Love the use of color (call me chicken) but nicely done.

Love how you are including the kids with the island!

One quick thought - maybe off base - but as I looked at kitchens on GW, I noticed a few that put a matching trim board under the DW - I just did this in ours and like it better than the black rubber bumper - if you have any extra trim - give it a try and see if you like it - if not, just leave as is!

In any case - just a lovely and functional kitchen!! We want to see pictures of some beautiful cooked dishes in the kitchen!

Stunning transformation! Oh my goodness it is lovely! It doesn't look like the same space even. You did GOOD! Enjoy!

BTW your pendants are amazing.

Wow! I love it- great job with everything. You have a beautiful home and the fireplace is especially stunning. Enjoy your beautiful space!

Great transformation! Love your red island, SS, marble BS, and (of course) that spice drawer! What size is the spice drawer and what containers are you using for your spices? I'm sure you've been making wonderful memories in your "new" home!

Love your beautiful soapstone! And the red island is a great pop of color! And your fireplace is beautiful!

My 5-yr old desperately wants a red kitchen. I can't say it'll happen in our space, but it looks awesome in yours. I love the pop of color. AND the soapstone.

flwrs: the spices are in a 30" drawer, inside dimensions are 27" with plenty of space for my spices, measuring utensils and scale. I first had the idea from AnneNJ who posted her finished kitchen ... I had seen it here before then, but I didn't have my headspace ready for where my spices would go until AnneNJ posted hers

The spice jars are the square glass 3.75 oz jars from specialty bottle, I also have a few of the 6 oz jars for bulkier (star anise) or more often used (sea salt, garlic, cornstarch...) spices.
square spice jars

Then I had Mabel's labels do up a set of custom labels for my spices and pantry canisters, I had some left blank so I could fill in any I forgot or wanted to add later for any reason. For some reason GW doesn't like the link so I couldn't hyperlink it, but here's the address:
http://www.mabelslabels.com/products/canister+and+spice+labels+custom

Here is a link that might be useful: AnneNJ finished kitchen

What a beautiful open, light and airy space. I like the new fireplace and the island pendant lights are stunning.

Renovation creep - I know it well and I believe it is what keeps contractors in business.

OK, here's the update with the details for my floor.
The flooring company uses BONA products, the floor is finished with Bona Traffic Finish. The colour was custom mixed on site, I don't recall the details 100%, but I know we started with Java, and ended with a 50/50 mix of Java and (I think) clear - basically just diluting the Java stain by 50%. We tried a bunch of things that day, and it went pretty fast with no time to deliberate since the stain dries a slightly different colour and the truest match of the finished product was with the wet stain. I'm 90% sure that's what we ended up with and I think that's about the best I can do. Hope that gives anyone interested a place to start!

Thanks to everyone for the kind comments. We love our kitchen! And I really do love the floor ;)

OOPS! Whilst organizing some of my "pre/mid/post reno" and "peek inside my cabinet" photos I discovered a photo of my floor the day we chose the stain. It clearly says 50% EBONY. Not Java. I don't even recall viewing ebony, never mind choosing it! Not sure where/when ebony left my consciousness and java replaced it but somewhere along the way I made a mistake.

Sorry to confuse anyone interested in my floor colour. The correct colour is, in fact, EBONY diluted to 50%.

Thank you so much for posting! I showed DH your red cabinets, and he finally agreed to having red cabinets in our kitchen. Thanks!!!

Lovely. And I love the SW "I am your father" bit. ;^)

Your new kitchen is stunning. It is so beautifully coordinated--a feast for the eyes.

What a transformation!

I have a couple of questions:

Was it a big job to replace the fireplace brick with new stone?

About "Countertop: Anastacia Soaptsone sourced in Canada from M.Tex via Greensville Soapstone" - how exactly does it work? I need some not-too-dark green soapstone and the local yard has only very dark (almost black) ones.

TX!

eleena: the fireplace wasn't a big job at all. Took one guy (who knew what he was doing) a day and a half to do it, the original brick is still underneath, he just put the new "cultured stone" overtop. It all comes as a bunch of puzzle pieces to fit together, the corners take a bit more time but it wasn't a huge job.

Greensville soapstone was incredibly helpful to me throughout the process. If you are in Canada and interested they have access to all the M.Tex soapstones. I emailed a few times, they were helpful with all of my questions, fed ex'd me the samples I requested (at my cost which was refunded/considered a deposit later when I purchased the soapstone), then did everything they could to help me get the countertop of my dreams. I chose my slabs based on two samples I had in hand of the Anastacia and photographs of the partially oiled slabs. It worked for me because I was flexible about the detail of the colour variation and veining in the slab, but needed a hard enough stone in a large enough slab for my island. I took the only two slabs that met that criteria for me, and they turned out to be even more beautiful than I had pictured when I saw them in person. It was a bit anxiety provoking but worked out for me, as I said, because I was a bit flexible about the aesthetic detail of the stone.

They will also do the fabrication for you but I was a bit leery of getting someone to template, sending them the template, then shipping huge slabs of stone already cut across Canada. Instead I found a local fabricator to help me out. The local fabricator made enough mistakes that if I were to do it again I would have had the slabs shipped to me and looked for a Canadian version of "Florida Joshua" to come and do my countertops on site. Any travelling soapstone specialist could probably have done a better job than my fabricator, but I still love love love my soapstone. It is my favourite thing in my kitchen and was the most important and difficult decision for me. I just think I could have been made a bit happier with some of the details if I had gone another route for fabricating. But since there's no going back ... I'm loving what I have!

hth! Let me know if you have any other questions

Here is a link that might be useful: Greensville Soapstone

Thank you!

IDK why I did not realize you are in Canada, sorry. I am in the US and actually not too far from M Tex, but not "close enough", so I'd need a local distributor. :-(

I need to "cover up" my brick cove with something and I was thinking of wooden panels faux painted to look like plaster (that is a topic for another post) but your stone looks very interesting. I take it it was not too expensive then?

Could you post a close-up (if it is not too much to ask)?

One thing I learned through this process is that comparing prices between Canada and the US is pointless. We pay about double for most things. But it was considerably less than having true mason work done, and still looks nice enough. If you look closely you can see the "puzzle pieces" fitting together, but it doesn't really bother me.

Here's a few from the same photo bucket album

Fireplace before:

Fireplace after:

Close up - showing how I use the storage but it's a bit closer if that helps

Thank you!

What a neat storage, btw! I am guessing our children are about the same age. :-)

OT, but how did you get the hand- and foot-prints done like that?

I really want to do the same while she is still little and her feet are so cute, LOL.

Bravo, what a great job! Looks like it was a huge one, too - completely transformed the house. It's really beautiful-enjoy!!!!

Awesome job. so may though out details, the stone, the touches of red, the lighting, it all works together so beautifully.The backsplash is stunning as well.great job! enjoy!

Wow! I LOVE THIS. A great combination of wonderful function, elegance, and fun. It has such a comfortable feeling, too. Great job!!!

eleena: the plaques were made by a local small home business that specializes in impressions. I've seen some commercial kits to do something similar as well available in craft stores or baby supplies stores. A google search or a publication for baby/kid related stuff available in your local area might have an advertisement for something similar too. A cute keepsake for sure!

I was just browsing my favorite kitchens again and saw the info on the stain. Thank you. I forgot to email you directly.

I really love your home. Makes my shoulders relax.

Fun, yet beautiful, kitchen! Excellent choices. Yummy soapstone. Love the funky island lighting!