Kitchen Update
Making a house a home is an ongoing evolution of beauty and function. The kitchen is our latest space to update. To be honest, we are not entirely finished with the space but I just couldn’t wait to share the progress!
Factors to consider when updating your kitchen
In our current home, each space has to be well thought out. We do not have a large footprint for a kitchen. In fact, I would call our kitchen a galley style kitchen. Therefore, when looking to update, I needed to make sure we utilized every square inch. Working with the existing footprint of the home was our biggest factor when creating our kitchen vision.
Initial layout of cabinets. Upper cabinets that extend all the way to the ceiling were a must for this area as well as an entire wall of cabinets on the opposite side of my appliances. The wall of cabinets not only holds dishes and cups but houses our pantry as well. Because the square footage of my kitchen is small, we used upper cabinets stacked on top of one another. Upper cabinets do not have the same depth as standard floor cabinets and this change allowed us to increase our floor space.
Progress shot of our wall of cabinets. Components of our kitchen update
From top to bottom, the components we have utilized in our kitchen update are: Blue Heather and Simply White paint by Benjamin Moore; shaker style cabinets, cabinet handles, and drawer pulls from Cabinets to Go; butcher block (stained by us with Minwax Early American stain) from Southeastern Salvage; porcelain tile titled San Michelle from Floor and Decor; and grout in Alabaster purchased from Floor and Decor.
Many backsplashes that I have seen recently have marble as the material of choice; however, marble is beyond our price point. We went with a 36″ x 36″ porcelain tile.
Our backsplash is 36″x36″ porcelain tile. Progress on our kitchen update
At this time, we have all our cabinets installed, backsplash put up, countertop laid, first coat of wall paint and handles and pulls installed. What we have yet to complete is the second coat of wall paint and the crown molding painted as well as the toe mold installed and painted.
To see what other areas of our home we have updated, you can read here. Let me know what your favorite part is. Do you have a question regarding our selections or the process? I want to hear from you:)
Our current view of our kitchen! Wow with Wallpaper!
When I use to think of how to decorate my home, getting a wow with wallpaper was not in my top ideas. In fact, I am not sure if it would have even made my top 10 decorating ideas. However, it is good to admit when you are wrong and I was wrong.
Rifle Paper Co. Pomegranate wallpaper added to our half bathroom. Inspiration
After viewing beautiful examples of wallpaper displays, I was convinced I needed to incorporate this texture into our home remodel. Being new to this scene, a little bit will go a long way. We incorporated a beautiful Rifle Paper Co. print titled Pomegranate. I selected two areas of the home to showcase this gorgeous print: our half bathroom and our laundry room.
There are a few accounts on Instragram that provide ample inspiration of the traditional usage of wallpaper within the home.
Garden & Grace is such an inspirational account. A local construction company first peeked my interest in this feature with the following beautiful space:
Twin Construction, Inc. delivers taste and style consistently in their projects. Tools
Now to the application! My husband and I knew we would be hanging the wallpaper ourselves so I had to take some YouTube crash courses on how to hang it. DIY projects are not new to us, we have been DIYing our homes our entire married life. You can read about one of our recent projects here.
I viewed the following YouTube video before beginning.
Wallpapering is definitely a two person job. My husband and I tackled our half bathroom first but by the time we transitioned to our laundry room, it became a lot easier to install. The wallpaper seems to be a focal point to draw the eye and make smaller spaces seem larger.
Our Laundry Room For our these projects we used a large framing square to guide cuts, a flat surface to spread wallpaper on and make cuts, a razor edge, paint roller to roll on adhesive, Roman adhesive (shown below *as an Amazon Associate, I may earn commission on viable links), and a plastic straight edge paddle to smooth out any bubbles or creases.
If the idea of hanging wallpaper seems overwhelming, start with peel and stick wallpaper. There is a lot of room for error with peel and stick. I will caution against using pre-pasted wallpaper. I have read of nightmarish experiences using a pre-pasted finish. The glue can become too much to handle. Truly, it does not take much to wow with wallpaper. Let me know if you give it a try!
Welcome!
Hi! My name is Ashley. I am a stay-at-home mom to three kids (our fourth one has already left the nest). I am wife to Jeff, and we have been married 17 years. Our children are ages 20 (my stepson), 15, 14, and 9. We also have three dogs! I cannot believe we have three dogs: a Mal-shi, Labradoodle, and a Poodle. They keep life interesting.
My background is in special education. While I have recently worked part time as a special education instructor, a majority of the last fifteen years have been spent as a stay-at-home mom – my true passion.
Cullman has been called home for the last 14 years; however, 2020 brought a us to a new town. We’ve recently moved and are setting up house in Homewood, Alabama. With a child in elementary school and two in high school, we are on the go often and a big move in the middle of a pandemic is not for the faint of heart.
After spending time on Instagram, this blog is a great addition to add depth and detail to my Instagram squares. You can follow along in my day to day life at The Helms House on Instagram. My goal is to share my home and family with you.
