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

Things are really moving along with the kitchen now!  Once the counters were installed, it was off to the races on getting the details finished.  So, we’re a little behind in real-time with my blog posts, but I want to make sure I take the time to share each piece of the renovation.  It doesn’t sound like a glamorous topic worthy of its own blog post, but I want to share about the basement door.  When you see how pretty it is, you might agree it’s worthy of the feature. So, let me remind you what the basement door looked like pre-renovation… Oh man, it’s hard to believe that was our kitchen.  It’s changed so much!  Except for the exterior doors, all of the doors in our house are hollow-core slab doors.  I am thankful that the exterior doors are solid wood, paneled, and traditional in style.  They are perfect.