Peanut Butter Fingers

After we did a little living room refresh last December, I started to get the itch to tackle another project in our home. If there’s one room in our house where we spend most of our time, it’s our kitchen. We have an open floor plan so our kitchen spills into our family room and since our family room pretty much doubles as a play room for the boys (something I thought I’d never do pre-kids — ha!), we’re in our kitchen all the time. I love that I can make breakfast or tackle a little dinner prep while the boys play and still feel part of the action.

There are a bunch of things I’ve loved about our kitchen ever since we bought our house, most notably the white cabinets, large wood top island and granite countertops that don’t show crumbs, spills, etc. Since we wanted to simply update our kitchen a bit and not completely overhaul it, the most obvious place to begin was the backsplash. (Just in case you’re in the market to replace your backsplash, I had a blog reader recommend this backsplash designer website to me which was immensely helpful in seeing what style of backsplash would look good with our current cabinets and granite.)

We initially considered replacing our backsplash ourselves but ended up hiring a contractor our real estate broker friend Drew recommended to help with the project. This was absolutely the right decision for a myriad of reasons. To keep a long story short, once our old backsplash was removed, the project involved a lot of additional steps before the new backsplash could be installed and they were steps that would’ve been way over our heads.

Our contractor, Mike Howie, was incredibly thorough and his experience helped us brainstorm ways around the hiccups that kept popping up after our old backsplash was removed. (If you happen to live in the area and need someone to help with and tile/floor/home improvement projects, I cannot recommend Mike enough! I’m happy to pass his contact info along to anyone interested, so feel free to reach out and let me know! He’s talented, ethical and very reasonably priced.) We purchased our backsplash and all of Mike’s supplies from Lowe’s and absolutely love the way everything turned out.

Here’s the BEFORE:

(As you can tell from the chains and instructions on the counter, we were clearly about to begin replacing the light above the island when I remembered to quickly snap a “before” photo!) 

And the AFTER:

Aside from the backsplash, we made a few additional changes to our kitchen, including updating the faucet (I’m 100 percent obsessed with the look of large coil faucets), installing a reverse osmosis water system, swapping out our bar stools and changing our overhead lighting. Our faucet was another Lowe’s purchase Ryan bought after doing a lot of research and the reverse osmosis water system was his idea as well. I was fully on board with that one since the space where the little spout is now located used to be a random soap dispenser that we never filled because it was such a pain to fill underneath the sink.

As for the additional aesthetic changes, I ordered our new bar stools and overhead lighting online and am incredibly impressed with both the quality and the price point of our finds! The stools feel sturdy and comfortable and the Laurel Foundry Modern Farmhouse Light looks like one I was coveting from Restoration Hardware but cost a fraction of the price. (We chose the antique silver leaf finish to coordinate with our stainless steel appliances.)

Overhead light BEFORE:

Overhead light AFTER:

The only additional changes we made were to change up the way we organized some of the things on our counter tops and I scoured HomeGoods for a few fun finds like the tray holding our flour and sugar bowls and a candle and kitchen towels to bring some of the colors of our family room into our kitchen.

I’m actually still in the market for some mini plants to add to our counter tops to incorporate a little greenery/color I think will pop against the white backsplash, but I haven’t found anything I love just yet.

So there ya have it! Our kitchen refresh! I’m so happy with how it turned out and love the way the space feels lighter, brighter and happier!