Transforming a Kitchen from Drab to Fab

Mar 20

Written By

When I first met my clients at the Calgary Home + Design Show they had stopped at the ‘Ask An Expert’ booth to ask me questions about their kitchen. I got to hear about how there were not in love with their kitchen and how they did not love their fireplace that shared the space. After the show Mr. and Mrs. Client gave me a call and we booked a time for me to come out to see how I could help them transform their kitchen from drab to fab.

Transforming a Kitchen

Dark and Dated

When I first saw the kitchen I wasn’t surprised. I’ve been in a fair number of homes with similar things going on (insert early 1990’s here). Here were the items that were on their wish list (in no particular order):

Chop off the tiers for the fireplace.
Reconfigure the phone desk area.
Reconfigure the island (no sink and more useable space)
Please make it white!

Before Pictures

Transforming a Kitchen: FireplaceThe design of the existing fireplace was not one that was loved by my clients. The 3 tiers really cut off the kitchen from the living room as well as the eating nook.When we were talking about redesigning the fireplace, the fear of the unknown was one I had. Was there a reason for the bulky fireplace design with the 3 tiers? When we took apart the tiers we had a huge sigh of relief– no venting! Turns out it was just a bulky design that someone thought was nice. I chose a tile that would compliment the quartz counters and had a wonderful carpenter look after the mantle. Transforming a Kitchen: The KitchenDark and dated is what I thought when I first saw the kitchen. To this day, we are still not sure if the home builder installed the cabinets or if the previous owner renovated the kitchen (as there are a few indicators that this may not have been the original kitchen). The outer cabinets were maple while the island was made of oak. Ok – that’s just weird! Transforming a Kitchen We also looked at reconfiguring the kitchen island (making more useable storage and taking away the overhang) as well as reconfiguring the phone desk area.

Transforming a Kitchen: The Reveal

For this renovation, it was important to keep the layout of the kitchen the same as we were not touching the hardwood floors. The floors were in great shape and in my opinion, a beautiful medium brown colour. This kitchen received new cabinets, new quartz counters, new under mount sink and faucet and new backsplash tile. We were able to use the existing hardware from the old kitchen and my clients loved their paint colour (Sherwin Williams Antique White) so that stayed as well. I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Here’s the reveal!

All after photos by Ruth Skiffington Photography