A few people have asked about my love-it-or-hate-it pot rack.  Let me answer that question right now.  Yes, the pot rack is making an appearance.  I’ve had a pot rack or pot rail in my kitchen for almost 20 years and I just can’t go cold turkey.  After a few months without one, I missed it almost daily.  Yes, I like how it looks and it’s a great way to display my pretty pots, pans, colanders, and molds, but it’s where we store our everyday pots and pans.  Keeping them stacked in a cabinet or drawer just isn’t the same.  I wasn’t 100% sure I wanted to hang the pot rack in my new kitchen, though.  But, once things were more settled, I knew it needed to be a part of this kitchen.  So, Jeff helped me hang it over the weekend. And then, on Monday, we hung the pot

Last week I shared that I was sanding, priming, and painting some shelves to install in the kitchen.  Open shelving wasn’t in my original plan for the kitchen, but once I started unboxing all of my kitchen stuff and moving in, I realized I wanted more storage/display space as well as a place to put my stand mixer.  I thought it would go on the shelf under the antique baker’s table, but it was just a tiny bit too tall.  So, I thought back to my Minnesota kitchen and how much I enjoyed the open shelves we put in an awkward niche.  You can see those HERE.  I knew I had just the spot for something similar in this kitchen. I looked into fancy wood and brass brackets, but we’re getting to the end of our kitchen renovation budget and expensive brackets weren’t going to work.  I also wasn’t sure

As I’ve shared throughout the 1970 kitchen renovation series, we hired out the large projects and decided to do the painting and finishing work ourselves in order to make everything fit into our budget.  Jeff and I built a custom range hood for our PA kitchen (you can find the plans and tutorial HERE), so we decided to do that piece.  When we started to plan out installing the range hood and building the wood surround, we ended up collaborating on the project with our contractor.  He built the frame and installed the hood and we built the cabinet.  It just made sense since he was doing the ductwork and installing the other appliances.  He’s also going to have a stainless steel frame made to trim out the bottom of the hood so wood isn’t exposed on the underside.  I will show all of that and give a full review

Now that they are installed and we’ve been using them for a while, let’s talk about the brass faucet and stainless steel sink I selected, why I selected them, and how those decisions are panning out so far. Let’s start with the sink.  I decided to go with stainless steel because it is a forgiving surface that’s easy to keep clean.  I’ve had white enamel and ceramic sinks and, in both cases, they showed scratches, and stains, and needed to be babied.  I don’t mind babying things in our house, but a kitchen sink is a bit annoying to treat with kid gloves because it’s supposed to be a workhorse.  I love the look of a white sink, though, so that’s what I went with in our MN house when we updated our counters.  I had fleeting thoughts of getting a white sink again, but I decided to go with

If you’ve ever been through a kitchen renovation, you know that the day the counters are installed is a big day!  Last Wednesday around lunchtime, a truck pulled up carrying our counters.  I was called out to compare the sample and to make sure they were the right counters.  There was a very slight variation in the undertones, but it was hard to tell if it was just the particular sections we were comparing.  Either way, they were the counters I ordered and any variations were just a part of ordering quartz. The good news is I love them.  They look perfect with the cabinets and everything else and I am over the moon.  After all of the angst over the counters, which was the hardest part of the entire renovation to nail down, we arrived at a happy ending. There is a beautiful, subtle veining running throughout as well