Today we’re talking about the stock market! Just kidding. Exactly as the title suggests, we’re going to show you how we earned some really useful extra storage in our new kitchen by upgrading a formerly VERY PACKED utility closet. It used to basically just have a water heater and an HVAC system in it without much room for anything else, and now there’s, say it with me… so much room for activities. Ok, not for like cartwheels, but significantly more room to store stuff than before. Like maybe 500% more. Really.
If you watched our drawer-by-drawer kitchen organization video, you already got a peek at what we have going on in there, but today we’re sharing all the angles, and explaining how we were able to take this closet from “mostly water heater” to “so much everything else.”
The Utility Closet Before
We don’t have a lot of “before” photos of this closet because it was absolutely nothing to write home about. In a smaller house like ours, you need a spot for the ugly stuff like the HVAC system and the water heater and this closet was it. The photo below was taken right after we moved in. The HVAC system is to the right of that doorframe (the black tubes lead to it) and although this closet is pretty deep (it goes all the way under the stairs), the water heater completely blocked more than half of the closet that continues to the left of the doorframe.
This is an example of an extremely random pile of stuff we stored in there on that random patch of floor space between the water heater and the HVAC system in our first few days of living here. I think it was mostly bins of Christmas stuff and miscellaneous items we hadn’t found a spot for yet. Don’t mind the (not real) chihuahua skeleton. Our Halloween stuff now lives in a fabric bin in the laundry closet with the easter eggs and our pumpkin carving tools. And all of our Christmas stuff is in one of the wardrobes in our bedroom. Our house’s organization had nowhere to go but up from the day we took this photo.
I already mentioned the most frustrating thing about this set-up, which is that the water heater was blocking A LOT of potential storage space under the stairs, rendering it totally inaccessible and unusable. And especially in a smaller house, it’s painful to know that there’s a big empty cavity of perfectly functional storage space THAT YOU CAN’T GET TO.
So that leads us to the first step in our mini makeover…
Step 1: Update (& Relocate) The Water Heater
In a move that can only be called the MVP of this project, we had that bulky electric water heater replaced with a more energy-efficient tankless model. We used tankless water heaters in our pink beach house and our duplex (see below), so we knew it would take up a lot less space and give us better access to the back of the closet if the switch could be made.
And – to our pleasant surprise! – we learned that tankless water heaters are typically installed on the OUTSIDE of homes around here (call us Florida novices). Thar she blows, mounted to the siding right outside of that closet on the back of our house where we put all the ugly stuff because nobody can really see it (it’s also where our pool equipment, gas meter, and generator live – all hidden behind a tall gate).
So not only had we earned a much more efficient water heater, we suddenly gained access to TONS of extra storage space that runs all the way under the stairs. Which, when you downsize, is basically your love language.
We did our best to take advantage of the new space, but it was kind of a slapdash approach for a while because we weren’t quite sure what would work best. We hung some wire shelves to wrangle tools and miscellaneous supplies & threw some larger items we wanted to store in that newly accessible area under the stairs, but it was clearly a chaotic vibe (and not the best way to store that stuff, we pretty quickly realized), hence having zero photos of it. This is actually an old video screenshot from a quick spin around the house that Sherry does for insurance purposes every time we leave on a trip because Shavonda says so. Note: the theory is if you’ve recently recorded every nook & cranny of your house, you have that to reference if something happens while you’re gone, and you can show your insurance carrier to make sure they reimburse you for all the items you lost (which you won’t forget, because you have it all on tape).
We lived with things like that for a while, knowing it wasn’t working flawlessly, but also trying not to rush into some other idea that also wouldn’t work well, and over time as the rest of the kitchen renovation started to come together, we had more clarity on how we wanted to use this bonus space. And let’s just say it didn’t involve shallow wire shelving.
But before we could bring in some better-looking storage, we had a few things in our way. Quite literally.
Step 2: Reroute The Pipes & Wires
The closet still had various wires, tubes, and pipes that prevented us from putting things where we wanted them. So we paid around $280 to get two pros to come out and move them for us. First our favorite HVAC guys rerouted the thick black tubing and white pipe for the HVAC system as far to the right side as possible (so they no longer arc out so widely into the closet). Note: never compromise your system by changing things with a handyman or DIY if you’re not sure how that system works. We always use a really good HVAC guy when we’re making HVAC changes because a comfortable house temp is key 😉
Later that same day we had our favorite plumber out to re-route the water lines that run out to our tankless water heater, so those water lines are no longer obstructing the back wall at all. We hid them behind the doorway so you can’t even see it from the kitchen anymore! See the blue and red water lines that run above the baseboards in the photo above? Now they sneakily snake behind the doorway (they’re those clear tubes you see in this photo below):
So with everything out of the way, we were finally able to get to the fun part…
Step 3: Customize A Cube Storage Shelf
Hold onto your butts, because this is where it starts to get even more exciting.
We upgraded from that shallow wire wall storage to a basic cube shelf organizer – and we made it look a little less-than-basic by adding 5″ brass furniture legs and topping it with a piece of butcher block counter that we cut to size and sealed with 2 coats of cutting board oil (it always dries a little lighter once it’s soaked in).
Since you can see 4 of the 8 cubes when the closet door is open, we used matching taupe fabric bins to make the things look tidier than they really are. Those bins hold SO MUCH STUFF. Absolutely thrilling.
We use one of them to store dog food & treats, another one has our steamer & vacuum attachments, one has random things like spray paint & caulk & our a caulk gun. Let’s just say it’s about 5X more pleasurable than trying to balance that stuff in shallow wire shelves (which never could hold our dog food anyway).
We left the other 4 cubes bin-less and open, and those also hold a smorgasbord of stuff like extra toilet paper, overflow beverages, emergency supplies, and even our Berkey water filter. A few people have asked what happened to it since it’s not out on our counter anymore, and the answer is that during the final stage of our kitchen reno, we finally ran a waterline to our fridge (which created filtered always-cold water on demand – plus ICE!). After over two years without one, having a cold water & ice dispenser has been awesome. The fridge also dispenses hot water for tea so it has basically changed our lives. If this were Cribs on MTV I would welcome you in and talk about my fridge for ten minutes.
Anyway, back to the Berkey. We had it assembled on the counter in the utility closet for a while, but we all tended to just use the fridge when we wanted a drink. But we love our Berkey so we’re keeping it in case we ever need a truly amazing water filter (it can literally make pond water potable!), like a hurricane or other emergency. We have one cube dedicated to hurricane supplies where it sits, which also holds a crank radio, a solar-powered charger, some flashlights, etc.
There’s additional space beyond the storage shelf for some random bigger stuff to sit on the floor. And yes, that’s a dehumidifier that you see running because, well, Florida. Since it sits between the intake vent and our HVAC unit, it actually helps dehumidify the whole house.
And as a reminder, this used to be the view from this angle. So yeah… big difference.
Step 4: Add A Floating Shelf
Honestly, the cube organizer turned out to be more-than-enough storage for us at the moment, but we had some extra butcher block after we made the counter and we thought it would be nice to add a shelf for even more vertical storage.
We created a simple shelf with the help of these metal shelf brackets that we spray-painted Rust-Oleum’s Sunlit Brass to match the feet that we added to the cube storage shelf below. We actually used the same paint on the metal legs on the cube shelf after realizing they were more of an orange brass, and now everything matches.
The shelf and the countertop do store some functional things, like mugs and extra cups, a pitcher Sherry uses to water her 438 plants, and a handheld vacuum that’s easy for the kids to use. But Sherry threw some decorative things in there too because, well, we now have room for that. This closet really went from feeling like a wasted underutilized space to giving off an almost-pantry or bonus-bar vibe that we appreciate so much.
So yeah, framed illustrations of your dog and pretty vases can live in a closet too. Live your best life.
Step 5: Cover The Ugly
We still had that extremely utilitarian-looking HVAC unit right next to the area we had just spruced up… but I had an idea.
We built a simple cover panel from a sheet of thin plywood that we trimmed around the edges with 1 x 2″ boards and painted the wall color (SW Pure White).
The whole thing hangs from some eye hooks that we screwed into a basic wooden closet rod that we added near the ceiling.
This means we can easily remove the panel whenever the HVAC unit needs to be serviced.
And, since the intake is on the bottom of the unit, it doesn’t block an inch of airflow, and we can easily change the filter without having to take it down.
The overall effect of adding that panel is surprisingly helpful. It feels MUCH less like a utility closet in here, but still has all the function.
Step 6: Take Advantage of Hidden Walls
Last but not least, we utilized the inside wall (opposite the cube shelf, to the left of the doorway) to wrangle some last remaining items: a dustpan, some cleaning wands, a fly swatter… you know, the really sexy stuff.
We also hung this 24″ under-cabinet light vertically along the door molding to give us some extra light in there. It just plugs into a normal outlet (we had that added when we removed the water heater since power had been run to that spot for the water heater) and it offers two brightness settings. Toggle the switch one way for 50% brightness, and toggle it the other way for 100%. This is just 50% below, so it’s PLENTY bright.
So that’s the story of how we took this unassuming utility closet that literally only had this much accessible floor space…
… and gave it quite the glow up.
As a P.S. – I know it looks incredibly shallow in there, but we can both easily stand fully within the closet, walk all the way to the back corner to get the storage items that we have back there, etc.
If it helps, here is Sherry standing inside:
Since that likely didn’t help because she’s 5’2″, I’ll repeat this picture for you, because you can see that I’m standing fully inside of the closet (see the doorframe in front of me) to remove that HVAC panel. Thrilling, right? I can fully stand in that spot without hitting my head, and both of us have to duck to get to the back of the closet since the ceiling dips down, but that’s par for the course for a closet under the stairs.
One last note about that black upright vacuum, since I know someone will ask. We broke our beloved Shark Navigator that you’ve heard us talk about approximately 42 times (it was our fault, not the vacuums’) and it was no longer sold at that moment we broke it, so we caved and got a Shark ION P50 – but don’t fall for it. The Shark Navigator is forever and always our favorite cordless vac (so glad it’s back and available again! Sherry wishes we had waited). I will admit that we rarely use a “real vacuum” now that Eufy has come into our lives, except mainly for doing the stairs (which we sometimes do with our handheld vacuumbecause we’re cool like that).
To read all about our kitchen renovation, this posthas you covered (including the cost). And if you’d like to see how our entire kitchen is organized, we throw open all the doors & drawersright here in this post.
*This post contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
Some people are surprised to hear that we illuminate our entire pool area using nothing but solar LED landscape lights. As in: the sun provides free evening ambiance with zero effort on our part. Nothing has to be plugged in. Our electric bill feels zero impact from softly illuminating this entire area of our house. So today I wanted to share the 3 solar products we use in case you want to give your own outdoor space a literal glow-up.
Technically we have a porch light and in-pool lights too, all of which use traditional electricity, but we almost never turn them on. Honestly, they’re a little blinding and we like a soft glow that doesn’t block out our view of the stars. Instead, day-to-day (or night-to-night?) we just rely on our solar-powered LED lighting for that oh so charming come-hither glow.
I used to think solar-powered landscape lighting was a lackluster substitute for traditional, wired landscape lights (which, btw, we found very easy to install ourselves at our last house). But now we’re huge fans of solar lights, and I’ll tell you why.
Why We Love Using Solar Lights
One common reason for using solar lights is to avoid the wiring necessary for plug-in or electric-powered lights. And honestly, that’s one of the reasons we initially used them here – almost as a placeholder until we had time to install a more permanent lighting plan.
But since adding them, we’ve discovered there are TONS of pros to relying on solar lighting in your yard:
Easy to install: No wiring necessary! Just find a sunny spot for your solar panel.
Placement Flexibility: You’re not constrained by wires or proximity to a plug, put ’em anywhere!
Affordable: They’re not very expensive to buy and they’ll never add to your electric bill.
Set & Forget: They’re dust-to-dawn, so there are no switches or timers to worry about.
Eco-Friendly: Renewable resources FTW!
I even filmed this short little time-lapse video to show you how our pool area automatically transitions from day-to-night, without us having to do a darn thing!
Now, of course, the main drawback to solar lights is that they rely on sunshine, so they don’t glow as long on cloudy days – but generally they have surprised us by shining longer than we’d think they should on especially gloomy days (they might come on at dusk and shine until 11 or 12 instead of 3 or 4 like they do on a normal sunny day. Very occasionally if we’ve had a string of gloomy days they might only glow a tiny bit or not at all, but in those cases we always have that porch light and our in-pool light if we really need them.
Typically whenever we have friends over after dark, we hang around our firepit area or upper deck anyways, both of which are illuminated by plug-in LED outdoor string lights. So that pool ambiance you see in the video is mostly enjoyed by mom & dad in the hot tub, where it easily provides enough light to make sure nobody misses a step getting in, but not like a search-light level blast of light like a UFO is above us trying to beam us up.
The 3 Outdoor Solar LED Lights We Use
I’ll talk about each of these in a bit more detail, but for a quick rundown, here they are:
They all include the necessary solar panels, so you don’t need to buy any extra equipment. Everything is ready to go right out of the box. They are also all WARM WHITE, which helps them put off a pleasing glow, not a harsh fluorescent-colored light or anything too weirdly blue.
Solar-Powered Pathway Lights
Sherry has mentioned these solar pathway lights a ton on Instagram and I feel like they’re already building up quite a voracious following – and for good reason! So many of you have sent photos of them in your yards, and from seeing them in snow or other tropical places or just lining a front walkway in the suburbs or the city, they always look great. They’re attractive during the daytime and SO easy to install (just turn the switch in the cap on, stake them into the ground, and you’re done). The solar panel is built right onto the top of the light, and those starburst reflections shine down on the ground around them when they glow.
At dusk they automatically come on, casting a surprising amount of light that creates this cool pattern on the ground. Almost like rays of the sunshine beaming out onto your patio, path, driveway, or wherever. We’ve actually got them on all sides of our house – probably about 16 in total! We get asked if they work in the snow and colder climates and have definitely heard from people who have them and love them there – our only advice is don’t put them somewhere that gets zero sun – because, duh, they’re solar. So like under an awning that’s always shaded won’t work nearly as well as out in a garden, along a path leading to the door, etc.
I haven’t created an Excel spreadsheet to see how long they last every night to provide you with the mean, median, and mode (doesn’t that sound like something I’d do?) but the important part is that most of them are still on by the time we go to bed – so they’re functional for the time we need them to be functional. And I say “most” just because one or two of ours behind our pool wall don’t get as much sun thanks to the plants overhead, so they might fade a little faster.
Thankfully they collectively cast more than enough soft light for us to get around out there and soak up that ambient glow until around 11 or 12, we’re usually inside & sound asleep by then. There are definitely nights when Sherry’s randomly up at 3 or 4am for a glass of water or whatever and says she still sees them glowing softly out there after a sunny day.
Note: when you get them, turn them on under the cap. They have two brightness settings there as well, so you can experiment to see which one you like best. We have ours on the brightest setting and it’s still very soft and not harsh or in-your-face at all.
Solar-Powered Fairy Lights
Last summer we decided to give these solar fairy lights a try and I’m so glad we did. We didn’t really have a plan for them at first, but quickly decided to run them under the eave of our house and along our fence.
They too are easy to install. It just tacked in some small nails along the fence and wound the copper wire tightly around each nail. And instead of staking the solar panel into the ground, it literally just sits on top of the fence collecting all that beautiful free electricity from Mr. Sun. Can’t even see it from the ground (I’m standing up on a ladder for this shot).
One strand is 33 feet long, which worked out perfectly for us. We have two, and each strand starts on either side of the gate (which is how we were able to make sure the gate still swings open freely). So the one on the right side of the gate opening runs along the fence, while the one on the left of the gate opening runs the other direction across the house.
The solar panel on the other end of that strand that runs along the house just sits unceremoniously on the corner of our roof. You can’t really see this one from the ground much either from most angles, thanks to some greenery that obscures that corner and the inherent over-your-head factor (I’m up on a ladder to get this shot too).
You can see what I mean about the greenery in that corner that obscures the view of the solar pad on the roof here (it’s in that far left corner that you can’t see):
The LEDs don’t give off much heat, so a lot of people also use them more “organically” in bushes or other landscaping. They’d also be great for outdoor holiday decorations, like bunched up in a jack-o-lantern or as part of a Christmas display. Oh and if you’re hosting a disco dance party they also have various lighting modes – like flashing, twinkling, or fading in and out. We just use the solid “on” setting.
From certain angles it’s hard to see the ones under the house (thanks to the gutter) so it’s sort of like an under-cabinet glow that washes down the side of the house – and we often catch them in the pool reflection, like in the photo above. Actually, the reflection of these lights are one of my favorite things about them! Speaking of which…
Solar Patio Umbrella Lights
After the success of the fairy lights, I sought out some other places to add them. That’s when I came across these umbrella fairy lights specifically designed to go on the spokes of a patio umbrella.
Instead of a strand of lights that run in a straight line, these fairy lights are laid out almost like an octopus – with 8 shorter lengths of wire spidering off from a center ring. This makes it perfect for any umbrella with an 8-rib design, between 7ft – 10ft in length. We actually have this 11ft umbrella, so the lights don’t technically go to the ends, but you can see when you scroll up or watch the video it still looks really charming.
The kit comes with a bunch of small zip ties to hold the fairy lights in place on your umbrella. We also chose to wrap ours around the spokes too, because I found it required fewer zip ties (we just have one on each end) and holds the wires in place when we put the umbrella down and back up again.
The listing shows the solar panel mounted on the outer edge of the umbrella, but that made the umbrella lean a little to one side. So we just clip ours near the top of our umbrella instead – to that loose fabric around the top vent. The panel is literally like a giant chip clip, so you’ve got a lot of options for where you want to put it.
It doesn’t give off a giant amount of light (I wouldn’t be able to read a book by it, for example), but that’s not our goal here. We generally like enough light not to fall into the pool or hot tub and be able to see if we drop something but there isn’t “evening reading time” under the fairy lights. They just layer more glow into the backyard and reflect beautifully in the water of the pool.
Overall, we have found this assortment of solar-powered outdoor lights to be the perfect mix for us. We take evening hot tub dips a few nights a week (hot tubs are the best at night!), and we love that these lights offer a zero-effort, electricity-free way to make the backyard look cozy and inviting.
Oh, and one more thing, because it’s also solar. But it’s in a totally different area of our house:
BONUS: Solar Motion-Activated Flood Light
I’m switching gears a bit, I couldn’t tie up this post without mentionig the 4th type of solar light that we love: these motion-activated flood lights (a 2 pack is currently $30). They’re not really going to add any ambiance, but boy are they surprisingly bright for being solar-powered!
We put them in a couple of dark corners of our yard, including near our driveway to give us some extra light after dark if we’re getting out of the car and we’ve been really impressed by them. We’ve got ours mounted on trees and, since every part of the device pivots, you can adjust it to make sure it’s detecting motion where you want AND shining in the right direction. Again, they’re surprisingly bright!
So we hope this post encourages you to give some solar-powered lights a try somewhere in your yard or patio. And if you’re looking for some other outdoor updates you can do yourself, here are a few ideas:
Note: We get a lot of source questions, like “where did you get those lounge chairs by the pool?” or “what’s the link to that porch lamp?” so we created a spot with all that info (and our paint colors!). This page has any and all sources for things that are outside or inside our home.
*This post contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
It’s time once again to throw open every cabinet, drawer, and door to show you how we organized our kitchen, which we slowly renovated over the last two years (more on that slow but steady reno here). This post should be an especially fun one because you’ll see just how much we’ve improved upon the original organization of this kitchen, which we shared in this post almost two years ago. And, as usual, we made a video walk-through of the whole thing too, which also explains a few future plans involving two outdoor cabinets that we plan to add to the nearby kitchen porch. So yeah… lots to cover.
We’ll start with the video, because it’s truly the most comprehensive way to understand exactly what goes where in our new kitchen. Sherry also snuck some Penny footage in there for you, because she knows what you really come here to see. Plus you’ll get a sneak peek into our utility closet, which looks completely different than it used to when it just housed our HVAC system & a big water heater!
The last time we shared how we organized this small kitchen, it was September of 2020 and we’d only lived here for 3 months. We were excited about how functional we had made it in such a short period of time by working with what we had – and mostly were thrilled that we’d successfully downsized our belongings from our last kitchen and it actually worked for us. At this point in the pandemic we were cooking virtually every single meal at home and had two kids home full time doing at-home-learning… virtually every single meal we all ate was stored and prepared and consumed in this small kitchen. As a reminder, this is what it looked like at that time:
Slowly over the years, we added things like: a pantry cabinet, new (secondhand) appliances, updated cabinetry, backsplash tile to the ceiling on that back wall, etc – and as you saw in our kitchen reveal post, the kitchen now looks like this!
So let’s dive into the three major storage areas – the lower cabinets, the upper cabinets, and the pantry cabinets – to show you all of the organizational improvements we’ve made along the way. Disclaimer: the video is much more thorough than photos can ever be, plus it mentions those outdoor kitchen cabinets we ordered, and how we think things will shift a bit when they finally arrive – so watch that whenever you get a chance.
Organizing The Lower Cabinets
We actually LOST lower cabinet space as part of this renovation, which sounds like a downgrade on paper, but we gained an entire floor-to-ceiling pantry cabinet + four upper cabinets (3 along the back wall and 1 over the fridge). So it was for sure a huge gain in the long run. To jog your memory, these are the three skinny bottom cabinets that we took out:
We removed them to convert that window into a door so we’d have easy access to the porch out there, where we now have a grill and an outdoor table that we use SO OFTEN because they’re so convenient to have right off of the kitchen.
The kitchen porch is like a huge outdoor extension of our kitchen, which is pretty great to have in a place that’s warm almost year-round, so if you have a smaller kitchen with the option to create a little outdoor extension of it at your house, complete with an outdoor table and a grill (and maybe even an outdoor cabinet or two for storage of things like grill tools), we’d definitely recommend it.
This is the former storage space that we had before we added that door to the kitchen porch. The cabinets had such thick wood framing that it felt very choppy and inefficient. It was difficult to store anything wider than 12″ in there and it required a lot of bending or squatting down to see whatever you were retrieving from the back of the cabinet or that little half shelf on top. If you compare that to a pantry drawer or cabinet drawer, which pulls out and comes right to you without as much crouching, you can see why our updated kitchen has a lot more lower drawers than cabinet doors.
Those three drawers above our skinny previous cabinets also had that super thick framing, which stole a lot of room that otherwise could have been used to store things, and like all of the drawers in our old kitchen, they were shallow and narrow, which greatly limited what could be stored in them.
Here’s where things start looking up. By removing those three skinny cabinets and adding that door to the new kitchen porch…
… it allowed us to put a new 24″ base cabinet in what had previously been a totally dead corner. As you can see from this older photo below, the old cabinets didn’t have a lazy susan or some other fancy corner swing-out shelf like most modern kitchens do in that corner. The cabinets that were where the door is now literally just blocked access to anything that could have been stored in that corner.
So even though we lost about 40″ of old cabinetry, we gained 24″ right back the instant we put a nice big cabinet in that corner that used to be dead, blocked off space.
And since we’re big proponents of drawers instead of doors in your lower cabinets (so much easier to get things out! less bending! everybody wins!), this new 24″ base cabinet… which appears to have 3 drawers but actually has 4… is a WORKHORSE.
The top drawer is our “junk drawer” that we outfitted with two of Ikea’s bamboo storage trays (this and this) that fit perfectly. We had so much space in it that we added things like our car keys, the dog leash, and my wallet in there too since the drawer is right next to the door that we use most. It’s really handy for grabbing things you need before leaving, and it’s a nice clean look to have them tucked into a drawer instead of always collecting on the counter.
The next drawer down is our very important tool drawer. Yes, it’s weird, but we’ve always had a tool drawer (in every kitchen we’ve ever owned, throughout the past 16 years as homeowners) and it has become a habit we just can’t quit. We have some lesser-used tools stored in the hall closet, but it’s nice to have the stuff we use regularly down here so we can grab stuff to quickly hang a picture, measure something, tape something off, etc.
The bottom drawer is the deepest, which allowed us to add one of our favorite Ikea kitchen features: a hidden drawer! We can store ALL of our glass bakeware, containers for leftovers, and school lunch stuff in one place, which is more than I can say for the old drawers that were here.
We also added Ikea’s pegboard organizer to better wrangle all of our storage containers in our deep bottom drawer. It looks a little chaotic in this photo (if it came in white it would blend with the drawers a lot more), but it has been a big help. Things don’t rattle around in here, and there’s less digging for what you’re looking for. That open area on the back left is where the kids store their lunchboxes, but we took these photos back when they were in school… hence the lunchboxes being gone.
I know it sounds crazy, but this new 24″ cabinet has made us worlds happier than the old cabinets we removed ever did.
The Under Sink Cabinet
Ok, let’s move on to under the sink. As a reminder, this is what our old sink cabinet looked like. The big wood divider in the middle of the two doors was a little bit of a bummer, but we had pared down enough to make it work – especially with the help of those wire shelves on the doors.
The new cabinet is the same size (36″) but the big full-height doors make it easier to access things… so we’ve crammed more in there, I guess. Ha! I realize this is hardly Pinterest-worthy, but it’s real life. We always try to use the storage bins we have (even if they’re mismatched!) before spending money on something new, so that’s what you see going on in here. We also had stored a few things you don’t see in the photo above in our laundry closet before (like Sherry’s beloved Folex, our wood conditioning wax, the Lysol, etc), and now they all get to live down here in one spot.
That statement is true of a lot of random items actually. We definitely were just trying to find a spot for things three months into living here when we wrote that initial kitchen storage post – so some things just couldn’t be in the kitchen due to lack of room – so they were relegated to the laundry closet, the hall closet, or somewhere else. It’s VERY NICE to have things all in one spot again, so there’s not that whole “are the magic erasers under the sink…? No they’re in the hall closet!” thing.
Some things don’t change though – we’re still relying on lazy susans under the sink (we especially love this clear divided one) to access our everyday cleaning supplies. And we’ve used the same wire shelves we’ve had all this time to create two levels of storage that allow us to condense some things that had been in the laundry area/hall closet/etc. It makes the whole area really flexible for us.
The Cabinet With Our Utensils and Pots & Pans
To the right of the sink cabinet is where we store our flatware, pots, pans, and other baking dishes (brownie pan, cinnamon roll pan, etc) since it’s right next to the stove.
To make more room on the other side of the stove for a much more efficient cabinet than the one we had there before, this new cabinet became slightly smaller than the old one (only by an inch or two). But again, because the Ikea drawers are more efficiently designed without such thick wood framing that steals a lot of space, it works harder and allows us to store a lot more than before. The top drawer is for our utensils and we used another bamboo tray that Ikea makes (so it fits in there perfectly without wasted space) to keep all our utensils and serving spoons and stuff in place.
I know it looks incredibly weird that we have a drawer with just one single pan in it, but that’s really how our drawer looks. It’s the pan we use the most, and I figure if we ever need the drawer space for something else, we can just add it in there too, or we could keep that pan out on the stove. Always nice to have room to grow, right? And yes, it’s this pan (we had to see what the hype was about) and since I know some of you will ask for our review: we like it, it’s easy to clean, we like the color, we like that it’s non-toxic/green, and we use it basically every time we cook dinner, but since so many people sing its praises we figure you already have one too.
The bottom drawer has our deeper pots and saucepans (more than just one – ha! You can see all of these drawers better in the video, btw), plus we used another hidden drawer to store some of our metal baking pans for things like cinnamon rolls and brownies. It’s so nice not to have all of that stuff jumbled on top of itself in one big drawer.
As a quick reminder, this is what the old cabinet looked like here. We definitely made it work, but it involved a lot more bending since nothing was a pullout that came to you.
Now on to my favorite “transformation,” which we’ve gushed about before… because to know it is to love it.
The “Oil Drawer” Cabinet
We’ve shared this picture several times as a prime example of how inefficient the old cabinet was to the left of the stove. That cabinet was 7″ wide, but because of the bulky wood frame, the actual storage space in the drawer was only around 4″ wide. After some failed attempts at storing spatulas, spoons, and dishcloths in there – everything was too big or cluttered! – it became our infamous “oil drawer.” Because that’s all that fit.
Ikea has limited options for small cabinets, so we wondered if their 12″ two-tiered drawer could really make that much of a difference (that’s still a narrow cabinet, no matter how you slice it). But IT HAS BEEN AWESOME. The top shelf is deep enough that we can store a whole slew of oils, vinegars, cooking sprays, and small kitchen gadgets (can opener, peeler, citrus squeezer thing, etc) all STANDING UP.
A lot of this stuff had previously been stored in those three cabinets we removed for the new door on the other side of the room, so it has been great having it all in one spot instead of doing that thing where you open like 3 different drawers in search of something because similar things live in all 3 places.
And that’s just half of the good stuff going on with this new pullout cabinet, because we have that whole bottom section too!
The old cabinet was teeny tiny and couldn’t even be opened all the way due to the door molding. It was vertical so it looked like it would be good for baking sheets and cutting boards, but it was always kind of a hard-to-see clutterfest in there, and you usually had to squat down and take everything out just to get to one thing at the back of the stack.
Now we have all that stuff on the bottom shelf of this pull-out drawer, and we screwed in some of these metal partitions to keep things from rattling around and to keep them all from leaning against one another. So now we can reach in and grab the muffin tin or the cutting board without having to take out everything that was formerly blocking it. And now instead of fishing around in a dark narrow cabinet, it’s a pullout, so everything rolls out to greet us. Plus it’s all much easier to see because it’s not in a dark narrow cave of a cabinet.
We still store flat pans and skillets in the oven warming drawer. That’s a habit that will never die. And while we might not have a ton of kitchen gadgets (we don’t own a crockpot for example, because we had one for years & never used it) but we do have a huge skillet for pancakes (it’s hard to see but it’s the black speckled thing on the bottom of the stack below that’s almost as wide as this drawer). What can I say? I take my pancakes seriously.
One last thing that I pointed out in the video too, which might seem simple, but finding a nice knife block that you like to keep out on the counter can save you from having to store that stuff in a drawer, so even just making that switch can free up some more drawer space and make things feel less cramped.
Enough about these lower cabinets. Let’s look upward to the uppers.
Organizing The Upper Cabinets
The original kitchen had uppers when we bought the house, but we took them down when we had the soffit taken out as part of our initial renovations. So by the time we moved in, this kitchen was sans upper cabinets. Which isn’t actually a crime to us. We designed the entire pink house kitchen without them (and the two duplex kitchens just had hood cabinets over the stove & a cab over the fridge).
So for as long as we’ve lived in this house, until the final phase of our kitchen reno, we just had some incarnation of open shelves. We emphatically love open shelves in a kitchen (our last kitchen had them too, as well as the one before that!) but over time we decided that the glossy white shelves next to our kitchen table were plenty of good functional open storage for us, and we didn’t also need them all along that back wall of the kitchen anymore.
So as part of our final step of the kitchen reno, we decided to add upper cabinets – both for the overall look of the room (weirdly enough, the ceiling looks taller with the upper cabinets because they draw the eye all the way up) and bigger (maybe because the clutter is behind them and the fronts are so smooth and simple)?
The upper cabinet on the right of the room holds plates, mugs, and mixing bowls on the bottom two shelves. The top two shelves are more of Sherry’s decorative objects – fancier serving bowls, extra vases, etc. These decorative items had been in our bedroom cabinets on either side of the fireplace before this point (vases don’t feel that crazy in a bedroom cabinet – but it’s so nice to have them in the kitchen by the sink!). Plus moving them in here freed up more space in the bedroom for bedroom stuff… you know like our podcast microphone. Ha!
If you’re wondering where our bowls and drinking glasses are, those are on the (still remaining) open shelves next to our kitchen table. As I mentioned in the video, we own more glasses and bowls, the dishwasher was just full when we took these pics/made the video. We love storing glasses and bowls on that bottom shelf because they’re easier for the kids to reach when they make themselves a bowl of cereal or grab a glass of water. Maybe once they’re taller (which is happening quickly) we’ll move everything together to that upper cabinet, but for now this works well.
We’re still working on the organization of the upper cabinets on the left side of the room. The large cabinet primarily houses the hidden exhaust fan for our stove, but we’ve tucked some bins with extra spices, baking goods, and other miscellaneous stuff around it. The big black case on top contains our grill tools, which will eventually move outside once the two outdoor cabinets that we’ve ordered finally arrive. So that’ll free up some extra space for more bins of anything else we might need to store as time goes on.
There’s another, narrower cabinet next to this one (you can see it in the video) that holds our strainer, vitamins, and other miscellaneous baking & cooking stuff, along with Sherry’s coconut oil and apple cider vinegar stock (she is who she is). You can see it in the video if you want a peek.
We’ve ordered some additional shelves to make the most of that corner upper cabinet, so… get excited. Update: they came before we got this post up, so maybe Sherry can share a quick peek on Instagram Stories sometime.
The Pantry Cabinet
Our pantry cabinet is by far the biggest addition that we made to this room in terms of functional cabinet storage. The space simply didn’t exist in the prior incarnations of this kitchen and boy are we thrilled to have it.
Prior to having the pantry cabinets, we used the two Ikea Fjalkinge bookcases as our “pantry storage” on the opposite wall, which is where our fridge was at the time. All of our shelf-stable food was stored in the lower drawers. It wasn’t the most spacious or flexible solution, but it worked for us for many months.
Now those two bookcases live upstairs in our family room and we’ve earned a lot more food storage on the other side of the room, thanks to these new floor-to-ceiling Ikea cabinets that we built in around our fridge, which we moved over to that wall (more on that here).
The top half is all shelving and we’ve used various bins and trays to wrangle things. There’s a variety of pantry stuff in here, but the most notable thing is that the addition of the pantry has allowed us to grab a few extras of something that’s on sale (like cereal or nutella, you know the important stuff), because we have room to keep “backstock” food on the highest shelf. That top shelf is just “surplus” – so we look up there to refill whatever needs to be refilled down below where our kids can grab everything – and if we don’t have it up there, onto the shopping list it goes. We’ve also got things like paper towels, coolers, s’mores supplies, and even our microwave in the cabinet over the fridge.
Most of the action takes place below, in the three lower drawers. This is basically snack and dry food central in our household. Both of our kids prepare their own school lunches, so keeping these well stocked helps that happen easily and without fuss every weekday morning. It looks a little stuffed in this photo, but we had just gotten back from the grocery store. Maybe it makes up for only having four glass cups on the floating shelves with the rest in the dishwasher 😉
That pretty much covers all of the kitchen cabinets in our new kitchen. By creating better storage in here, it has also helped us fine-tune the storage and organization across the rest of our house. As another example, we no longer have to keep keys and the dog leash in the laundry closet because they’re right in that drawer by the side door which we now use every day (we park on that side of the house, so it’s a great route for walking in & out).
And as for our revamped utility closet in the kitchen (which is also SUCH AN UPGRADE), we’re hoping to write a whole post about that soon. It’s wild to think that there used to just be a big water heater right behind that door that blocked us from using almost all of the closet.
If you’d like to know the sources for anything in our kitchen, from the fruit bowl to the toaster or the runner and the pendant light (all the things!), they’re linked and listedright here in this post for you. Plus this page is something we put together to try to help you find the sources for everything in our entire house.
And if you want to dig deeper into some kitchen organization posts of the past (or if you just want to virtually snoop through our other kitchens), feel free to check these out:
*This post contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
It may go down as our most gradual kitchen renovation ever, but almost exactly two years into living here (we hit that milestone last Saturday!), our kitchen is officially DONE! New cabinets? Check. Tiled backsplash to the ceiling? Yup. Quartz countertops and a sink that’s 3X deeper than the overmount sink of yore? Affirmative.
New hidden range hood? You betcha. More functional storage in the form of additional drawers, new upper cabinets, and a generously sized pantry cabinet? Yessir. Tons of before & after photos? That’s what this post is for! Plus we’ve got a full budget breakdown for you. So in the illustrious words of Tiesto, let’s get down to business.
To us (and maybe to you as well) this has felt like a very gradual transformation because we just sort of tweaked and adjusted things over the last two years in many small phases, rather than going through one mega-gut-renovation like our last house’s kitchen. And the good news is that no matter how slowly you peel the potato (is that a saying? If not, let’s make it one), the change still feels pretty dramatic when we look back at the day we bought it.
Not only is it a relief that it’s finally complete, we’re also so grateful for how functional it has turned out to be. I’d be lying if I didn’t say we weren’t a little skeptical of this space when we first laid eyes on it (ok, I was skeptical – Sherry’s one of those perenially optimistic people who truly believed in this room).
So imagine my elation that it has turned out to be one of the most efficient and easy-to-cook-in kitchens that we’ve ever had. After coming off of such a large kitchen in our last house, that was the biggest surprise. The work triangle in here is so direct and easy, it takes fewer steps to grab things and assemble meals (whether it’s a quick lunch or a deep and involved dinner). And we actually have a larger pantry cabinet than we did in our big Richmond kitchen!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: one huge pro to renovating a space in different stages over a period of time is that you really get to live with things, identify issues, and test out solutions before landing on the final design. So that definitely helped us in here.
Speaking of which, this video not only captures the finished kitchen as it looks right now, it starts with a flashback to what it looked like when we first laid eyes on it. In many ways it fills in more blanks than the entire rest of this post because a video is easily worth 1,000 pictures. So if you do nothing else, make sure you watch this video:
Again, this is the kitchen we laid eyes on when we bought the house (it’s one of many “befores” that we documented in this post). Between the soffit that ran across two walls of the room, the popcorn ceiling, and the mismatched appliances – there was a lot that we hoped to upgrade. And let’s not forget the boob light shining brightly on the ceiling.
As part of our pre-move-in renovations, our contractor made some big improvements while we were still in Richmond – removing the soffit & uppers, taking out the peninsula, patching the floors, and re-drywalling (we had to redo the entire first floor’s drywall and patch the flooring throughout due to moisture issues) as well as adding some can lights. But much to their surprise, we left most of the kitchen intact.
By the time we moved in, this is how we first lived with the space. Mind you, this was May of 2020 when we were still pretty much cooking and eating every meal at home, so it was a bit of an adjustment. But it worked!
Those first few weeks gave us confidence that we could live with this kitchen “as is” for a while, which gave us permission to make improvements slowly – and that’s largely what you saw us do over the last two years. We hung shelves. We installed a pendant light that we swagged over the table. We painted the cabinets mauve to match the laminate counters.
Then, about a year ago, we had a clearer vision of what we wanted from the finished space. We moved the fridge and built a large pantry cabinet around it for extra storage. We got a larger table that seats more people. We added a door where a window had been (which leads out to our grill & s’mores pit). We hung more shelves. Sherry cut the pendant light in half. You know, the usual tweaks.
And then finally this spring, we replaced the original cabinets with better-functioning Ikea cabinets (and painted them the same mauve color), got new counters, and – as you’re seeing for the first time in this post – added upper cabinets and tiled the backsplash! We also hung a new woven pendant light as a semi-flush-mount, rather than swagging it over the table like we used to do, which feels airy and simple. And the substantial brass faucet below it feels balanced and ties into the brass hardware.
From the subtle backsplash (Sherry describes it as: “a pearly-blue color that feels perfect for the beach – like the inside of an oyster shell”) to the classic marble-like quartz counters and the mauve color that we brought over to the new cabinets (which has always been in this room and feels meant to stay) – we really like where we ended up. The cabinet color is Artsy Pink by Sherwin Williams by the way.
So let’s talk about those new additions for a second…
Our New Tile Backsplash
This backsplash is actually what kicked off this last phase of the renovation. It was one of those “If you give a mouse a cookie” scenarios. We wanted to add a backsplash, but we knew it only made sense to do AFTER we replaced the counter. And it only made sense to replace the counter AFTER we replaced the cabinets. Those were things we intended to do eventually, but the desire for a backsplash is what made us finally pull the ripcord and go after all three. Also, our old sink was so shallow you could see a small cup protruding over the top edge. So that situation has greatly improved. Now we can hide all the dirty dishes. Long live the deep sink!
But back to the backsplash. Our initial goal was to add some texture and shine, but not a ton of bold pattern or color like we’ve done before. We just wanted it to feel light, relaxed, and beachy – and since it shares space with a sitting area and can be seen from the front door, we didn’t want anything too busy or bold that we might tire of over time. We quickly zeroed in on this affordable 4×4″ zellige-style tile in the “Blue” colorway. It’s extremely hard to capture in photos, but it’s truly a very soft blue-gray tone with lots of sheen.
The whole wall only cost us about $325 to do and we knocked it out in about 2.5 days, including grout. I won’t bore you with the step-by-step details, since we’ve talked extensively about tiling before (here’s our backsplash tutorial, including a video!) but it came together pretty quickly and immediately gave us that shine and subtle texture we were hoping for. It really is like the inside of an oyster shell.
The only thing about tiling a kitchen backsplash that I’ll reiterate is the point I illustrate in this post about LAYOUT PLANNING. Please, please, pleeeeease take time to plan your tile layout before you begin. You’ll probably want to minimize the need for small slivers of tile around any edges (like the ceiling or against the cabinets) so measure and/or dry fit your tiles to see how things look first. You can always make adjustments – like cutting your bottom row slightly or shifting your centerline to be on a grout line, rather than the center of a tile (or vice versa).
It actually took us a few tries of dry fitting (no mastic, we just leaned things up against the wall to visualize a few options) to make sure we chose a layout that looked even & symmetrical around the window AND against the side walls, especially since the window isn’t centered on that back wall.
My only other tip for installing zellige or zellige-inspired tiles is to sort them ahead of time, paying close attention to the different sheens and/or “directions” of the tile. Some of ours were more matte than others. Some had vertical or horizontal movement, others had a more circular feeling in their unique handmade-looking shapes (these don’t have exact square edges and the fronts vary in their peaks and valleys and shapes too). You can kind of see what I mean here:
So to achieve a nice randomized look, we actually had to be quite deliberate about placing differing tiles next to one another, often rotating them if two with vertical movement were about to be next to each other.
You can also see below that we painted that window trim the same tone as the tiles. It was feeling weirdly bright and white while everything else was intentionally tonal on that back wall, so it felt so much better as soon as we painted it to recede with the tile. We purposely picked a more gray-toned quartz counter to go with the blue-gray backsplash tile and our softly toned cabinets, because we were hoping for a soft layered effect and the result is so calming and subtle in real life. Be sure to watch the video for a better view of it – no picture can really capture it as well.
The Upper Cabinets & Hidden Hood
You can also see that we made the leap from open shelves to closed upper cabinets in this last phase of the renovation. It was something we went back and forth on, but ultimately were swayed by two things:
Adding more hidden storage, which feels less busy (we have open shelves by the table, so two walls of it was a lot)
Gaining a hidden range hood (a hood wasn’t required by code, but we always hoped to eventually add one)
Plus, we also think in the end that the kitchen feels bigger and taller in person thanks to these upper cabinets that go all the way to the ceiling. Two different friends have come over and been like “how weird is it that adding those big cabinets actually makes the back wall feel further back and higher?!”
We’ll share more about what’s IN all of these cabinets and how they’re organized in a future post, but I did want to show you the hidden range hood cabinet over the stove (although it’s arguably the least organized in the whole room).
This is a trick you may remember from our duplex kitchens, but it’s just the Ikea OMSINNAD range hood which is designed to fit inside an upper cabinet. It’s not the cheapest range hood in the world, but we were determined to keep that back wall looking as symmetrical & balanced as possible, so hiding the hood inside this cabinet was the perfect solution.
After not having a range hood for almost years, we’ve really appreciated owning one again (they help improve indoor air quality, cut down on airborne grease, and – bonus! – basically gave us under cabinet lighting on one side of the kitchen). Hashtag fancypants.
Also a deep stainless single bowl sink is forever our favorite choice for a kitchen (we’ve had a double bowl and even a white cast iron sink, but this is just ALWAYS our favorite). So that, along with a pull-down faucet that can be controlled with one hand is the jackpot for us (the whole controlled by one hand with one single toggle bar = why we’ve never gone for a bridge faucet).
It has been so great having the hood and upper cabinets that it makes us feel silly that we ever debated them in the first place. They helped this become, as I said at the start, one of the most efficient and easy-to-cook in kitchens that we’ve ever had…
… probably only rivaled by our first house’s kitchen, which had a similarly hardworking work triangle, but much less pantry storage than we have here.
So…. winner winner chicken dinner. That ranking definitely has a lot to do with this kitchen’s compact size and the fact that everything is never more than a few steps away. And let’s not forget how much more functional and fun this entire space became with the addition of this door that leads out to our new kitchen porch, complete with a grill that’s no more than five steps away.
This is a before of the very same angle. Pretty unbelievable, right? Notice how much taller the ceiling feels just by removing the soffit to allow for taller cabinets and elongating that window into a door.
Never before have we had an outdoor grill this close and easily accessible from the kitchen. It really is just a few steps away, which makes it ridiculously efficient and is definitely one of the reasons that we grill out so much more now. We also have an outdoor cabinet on order that will basically elongate our current kitchen counter and essentially connect it to the grill outside. So our grill tools can be stored out there and we’ll gain additional outdoor counter space.
Thanks to our new kitchen porch, we also have the choice of sitting outside to eat, and what can I say… we like options. If friends come over, the kids might end up inside at the table while we’re out here (or vice versa). Plus we have a big table on the upper deck that seats 8 more if we have a bigger gathering or want to head up there for a game tournament after dinner!
We also have a door on the other side of the kitchen that mirrors the door that leads out to the deck, which is a utility closet that runs under the stairs. We recently redid it all to gain a LOT more functional storage in there, so we can’t wait to show you how that closet has evolved. It houses our HVAC system, and also had our water heater, so it used to basically be blocked up and full of just that stuff…
… but we made the switch to a tankless water heater, so now there’s SO MUCH BONUS SPACE in this closet! It’ll never be a true pantry or anything since the HVAC system has to stay in there – but we added some handy storage and even a worktop surface – plus it’s where we keep our vacuum and broom and all that stuff. We’ll photograph and share all that we did in there in a future post.
Speaking of extra functions, another thing that makes this one of our favorite kitchens is the fact that this space is not JUST a kitchen. It also has a lounging/entertaining/hanging out area right nearby.
And compared to this picture taken during the initial renovation, the view has improved quite a bit.
The Kitchen Sitting Area
About half of this room is the kitchen zone, and the other half is a sitting area that is SO USEFUL to us. We all spend hours in here every day, and after two years of having it, we can’t imagine this house without it.
It’s an area that we definitely didn’t anticipate using or enjoying as much as we do – we just thought we’d try it out and see if we used it, and if not we’d put the dining table here and add an island to the kitchen or something. But boy do we use it.
This is what it looked like when we bought the house and, as part of our initial renovations, we closed off part of that opening to create our bedroom. Our guess is that the previous owners had a dining table here maybe?
Here’s another view of what it looked like before. That’s the old kitchen peninsula in the foreground and that door is our front door. So maybe it was some dining room / foyer situation for the previous owners?
For us it has become the perfect small sitting area downstairs – for reading or hanging out with friends who stop by while their kids run off to play outside or upstairs. It’s also where our kids hang out while we’re making meals (in the morning before school we’re all in there – and in the evening around dinnertime too). Making this area work with two doors kind of in the middle of it took some strategic furniture buying. Like the cozy loveseat and our new round terrazzo coffee table – but it came together better than we could’ve imagined.
In a smaller house there’s a certain luxury to having a hangout area downstairs as well as a cozy TV/movie room upstairs (once again, we can have friends over and sit and chat here while the kids are upstairs crafting or watching a movie). It really helps the house “live large” because we don’t feel like we’re all on top of each other.
Here’s a shot with some people and a certain smiling dog for a better sense of scale. I’d say this is a pretty typical scene, although I’d probably be playing Wordle and Sherry would be whispering sweet nothings to Penny like she is below (perhaps while also attempting to beat me at Wordle and talking smack like only a lady from New Jersey can).
As much as we loved our old storage coffee table, we knew something round would give the room better flow. And slowly over time as we lived here, we were able to add more built-in storage (like our bedroom wardrobes, the cabinets flanking our fireplace, the media cabinet upstairs – and even more recently optimized the utility closet in the kitchen) which meant that we had lots of alternate spots for the items that we used to store in the old coffee table. Sherry has loved this terrazzo table from CB2 for a long time, so it was an easy choice once we eliminated the need for a coffee table with storage.
Even though it’s pretty substantial looking since it’s made of stone, the light color helps this side of the room feel more open and airy than it did with the other table. Plus the terrazzo texture plays nicely with the durable metallic rug we’ve had forever.
Speaking of a room that works extra hard for us, we might as well swing over to the other zone in this room… the laundry closet. Yup, behind those two doors = an entire laundry station. I’m telling you, this room works so hard for our family.
Let’s flash back to a before shot from the same angle, just for fun. it used to be less wide (just one door) and it inexplicably led into one of the bedrooms (which also had a normal door for entry, so we closed the back of the laundry closet off real quick).
It feels really good to have the kitchen feeling more functional and streamlined along with a settled-feeling sitting area and a super-efficient laundry zone. We tried all sorts of insane layout ideas for the sitting area before landing on something that worked, btw, so don’t get discouraged if a tricky space feels like it’s evading you. Just keep trying new things and rearranging stuff, and two years later you might just be like… “this is IT!”
Before I break out some math on you in the form of a budget breakdown (you know I love a spreadsheet) let’s take one last look at the real star of this room, curled up in one of her go-to spots. Penny seems to love this loveseat just as much as her brother did.
The Kitchen Renovation Budget
This was one of my harder budgets to piece together because it was spread over so many months, but I did my best to hit all the major renovation elements you see in the finished kitchen (the pendant, new faucet, cabinets, counters, sink, disposal, tile, paint, appliances, hardware, etc). It’s strictly a kitchen reno/material budget so I didn’t add the fruit bowl, toaster, table, chairs, etc – since that stuff isn’t attached to the actual house/reno and I felt like it would just get insane to try to tabulate every bowl & plant pot.
I also didn’t include contractor costs from the initial house update before we moved in, because we left the kitchen intact for the most part (the old cabinets/counters/sink remained) and I can’t break out *just the kitchen prices* from our original renovation (line items were more like: “whole house new drywall”, “whole house floors patched”). So this budget is from the point of starting with a room that has drywall and doesn’t have holes in the floor, which seems like a pretty common starting place.
We did all of the other work ourselves (cabinet installation, painting the cabinets, tiling the backsplash, etc) so that’s why you don’t see any line items for that. The counter pros did install the counters, but that’s included in the price below:
*Our stove, dishwasher, and refrigerator were bought second-hand for $500, which was the deal of our lives, thanks to Facebook Marketplace and our realtor(the appliance total is $930 above because it also includes the Ikea hood).
Note: Changing the kitchen window to a door was part of a larger contractor price for redoing our entire kitchen porch. We’d guess it was about $1,270 for that part of the job (around $900 for labor + $370 for the door), although the cost will likely vary based on your situation & the door you choose.
And while we’re on the kitchen budget subject, you can check out how much the duplex kitchens cost right here and see another amazing kitchen renovation that was done on a budget that we featured a while ago right here.
Ok. We did it. One giant photo-filled post about our finished kitchen with lots of before & after photos, as well as a video (truly, the video gives you so much of a better feeling for the space than any series of photos can, so watch that whenever you can).
Thanks for following along as we shared the most gradual kitchen renovation we’ve ever done. There were lots of small victories along the way, like finally having a pantry or finally getting a range hood – and man it feels good to stick a fork in it (*insert bad dad-joke about forks belongingin kitchens here*).
And if you’d like to look back on all the other kitchens we’ve renovated over the years, we’ve got you covered:
That makes this kitchen our seventh one (!!!) and we wouldn’t mind if it was our last. Lucky seven feels like a good place to stop. Although Sherry helped a neighbor update her kitchen (while keeping her wood-toned cabinets!) so we hope to get that up on the blog eventually.
*This post contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
You know I love writing a spare-no-details product review (like this one and this one), so when enough people pointed out that when they search the blog for info about our beloved air purifier, nothing really comes up, I thought… I shall remedy that today.
I know. I’m a hero.
I feel like I should also point out that we bought these ourselves with our own money and nobody at their company knows us from Adam.
Sherry has always suffered from bad seasonal allergies, so we were thrilled to find a home air purifier that finally gave her the allergy relief that so many companies promise. The allergy difference that it makes for Sherry is night and day. So much so that when they were packed in the pod while we were moving she was like “WHY ARE MY ALLERGIES KILLING ME?!?!” and then we were like…. “oh, we packed the air purifiers in the pod… this is what life is like without them.”
She even notices an uptick in allergy symptoms whenever we travel and stay at an Airbnb or a hotel, because… you guessed it… the air purifier isn’t there to relieve her. So yeah, it makes a real difference in her life and her sleep and her stuffiness (or lack thereof). So she travels with allergy medicine but doesn’t actually have to take any when we’re at home.
And since this particular purifier is easy on the eyes as well as extremely effective, we recommended them to pretty much anyone who will listen – hence this post.
How Do You Choose The Best Air Purifier?
After buying a more expensive “designer purifier” (the trendy and pricier Molekule – which Sherry bought, noticed zero difference in her allergies, and subsequently returned) – we now swear by the Blueair Blue series of home air purifiers. Because after you buy something expensive and notice zero difference and then google it only to see tons of complaints about that company/product, Sherry was feeling pretty sheepish (see this article, and this article for example).
So she did tons of research and looped me in on it too (you know I love research). We wanted something that would WORK HARD and help her sleep easier and wake up a lot less congested. And when you do the research the choice actually gets pretty easy. Our beloved Blueair Blue Pure 211+ purifier is consistently included on lists of “the Best Air Purifiers” including these from Good Housekeeping, Wirecutter, CNet, and the holy grail that is Consumer Reports. And this article is especially stunning when you look at the graphic that shows how much it beat out the other purifiers – including the $800 Dyson!
Just like many of these articles point out, we find these Blueair purifiers to be:
Effective
Easy to use
Attractive
Affordable
We’ll get into each of these in more detail in a moment. They’re also Energy-Star rated and identified as one of the quietest air purifiers out there, which is definitely a plus. We leave ours on low 24/7 and it’s as low of a hum as when our house’s heat runs – even softer than that. If you’re not standing right next to it, it’s hard to tell it’s on (except for how you feel).
What Blueair Models Do We Own?
Within Blueair’s Blue series, there are four sizes designed for small rooms (100-250 square feet), medium rooms (250-400), large rooms (400-600), and extra-large rooms (600+). About four years ago we bought two of the large-room-sized Blue Pure 211+ purifiers, which have worked great for us ever since. We use one of them to cover our entire upstairs living room, and another one downstairs in our bedroom, which also covers the nearby hangout spot by our front door as well as our kitchen.
More recently – around 2 years ago – we also bought one of the small Blue Pure 411 purifiers for each of our kids’ rooms, which have also been great. Zero issues with any of them.
Does It Really Work?
Along with our anecdotal evidence about how much of a difference it makes for Sherry’s allergies, she has also heard from other people who got the same one and said it helped with everything from keeping their homes smoke free during the California and Oregon wildfires to helping someone with severe asthma to avoid hospitalization and steroids (which used to occur 2-3 times a year for her before she got the purifier).
Someone else wrote to say that she had chronic hives from an unknown allergen which resolved within a week of getting the air purifier. A mom of an 8-year-old with asthma that doesn’t respond well to steroids bought one and said he not only didn’t need a rescue inhaler anymore, he doesn’t even need his daily maintenance inhaler since getting the purifier. Lots of others also said their snoring (or their partner’s) completely resolved after getting one. And there were many stories about how someone thought they had a cold with a drippy nose and then discovered their purifier was unplugged, so they plugged it back in and that was the end of their sniffling. Note: You can read more about what other people said after getting one by clicking the archived circle that’s called “Air Purifier” on our Instagram profile page (you might have to scroll to the right to find it).
We also get some definite visual evidence that tells us our Blueair purifiers are working. Before I show it, I should explain how the Blueair Blue purifiers are designed. They’re basically made with 3 layers of filtration to capture a smorgasbord of nasties:
An outer fabric “prefilter” cover to trap large particles like dust bunnies, hair, and pet fur
A standard particle filter (similar to what you have in your HVAC unit) to catch pollen, dust, dander, and mold
An inner activated carbon lining to absorb odors, gases and VOCs
And while I can’t inspect the charcoal lining for VOCs, it’s easy to see the other two layers hard at work. Take the side-by-side below, which shows an old filter (left) that we’ve taken out to replace it with a new filter (right). See how black the old one is? Yuck!
The outer “prefilter” layer also gradually becomes a dust bunny convention, as you can see below. Not only does that fabric layer grab dust and hair, it also stops it from entering the device, which helps extend the life of the filter inside.
And if you see all that dust and worry that this puppy is a lot to maintain, it’s not, so let’s dive into that.
How Do You Operate & Maintain It?
Another thing we love about these air purifiers is that they’re super user-friendly and totally uncomplicated. Both models (again, we own two of these, and two of these) have a single button that reacts to the touch (not push) of a finger.
Adjusting The Fan Speed
With each tap it cycles through four speeds: off, low, medium, and high. A soft white light indicates which speed you’re on (although you can also tell by how loud the fan is).
Filter Replacement Light
This same light even turns colors (orange) when it’s time to order a new filter and (red) when it’s time to replace it. That way you don’t have to mark anything in your calendar or set a reminder on your phone. Once the new filter is installed, just hold your finger on the button until the light resets to white again.
Replacing The Filter
The filters come flat packed in a box and fold out to fit the shape of the purifer. Just lift off the fan motor (the top portion of the unit) and slide the new filter into place.
Cleaning the Prefilter
The fabric prefilter can get pretty dusty, like I showed you earlier. It’s literally just a big spandex-like sock that stretches over the bottom portion of the air purifier.
So while you can vacuum the dust off in place for a quick touch-up, when it gets really dusty we like to remove the outer covers entirely, shake them off outside, and throw them in a quick wash cycle. That’s all four of our prefilter covers in my hand below, so they’re really small when they’re not stretched out.
The other cool thing about the prefilter covers is that they come in different colors! The bright blue and medium gray covers that came with ours were a little bolder than we liked, so we purchased new ones in their lighter “Lunar Rock” color to help them blend in better. But they also come in more colorful options as well as some with more of a heathered texture.
I know, I know. It sounds silly and expensive to be buying new fabric covers just because we didn’t love the color, but they were around $9 and make Sherry weirdly happy. Let her have her $9 fabric air purifier covers, ok?
Now let’s talk about how much this whole operation costs.
Affordability: How Much Do They Cost?
Obviously, affordability is relative, and buying no air purifier is clearly cheaper than buying one. But after shelling out over $1000 for two pricier brand air purifiers (don’t worry, we got our money back) we were pleased to spend just $280 for each of our large 211 models (we ordered this 2-pack) and $119 for each ofthe smaller 411 versions. In the end, we got TWICE the number of air purifiers for more than $200 less than we had originally spent.
Of course, there are ongoing filter costs to consider as well, but thankfully ours last us a good long time – especially since we wash the outer covers to extend the life of the inner filter and run everything on low 24/7 (the frequency of replacement depends on your home and what speed you run your purifier). Based on my order history, it looks like a 211 filter usually lasts us around 9 months and a 411 filter goes a full year before it needs to be replaced for us.
One thing to note is that the air purifier will show you an orange light when the filter is winding down and will need replacement soon. This orange light doesn’t mean to change it then – that’s usually just when we order a replacement filter. We wait for the purifier to change that orange light to red – and that’s when we actually replace the filter to get the maximum life out of it.
It helps to know that we’re getting every last bit of use from each filter, and we like that each purifier tells us (first with an orange warning, and then a true red light for when to actually change it) so we don’t need to remember when it’s time to replace them (the larger 211 filters with carbon are $70 and the smaller 411 filters with carbon are $22 to replace).
What Do They Look Like Around The House?
As mentioned, we have four – two big ones and two smaller ones in the kids rooms. Our main objective was that we wanted air purifiers that performed well, so it’s truly a bonus that they’re easy on the eyes. I mean, we have a home with six rooms and we own four air purifiers. We like them with our eyeballs and our sinuses. They really do seem to fit right in.
So many others on the market look like compact HVAC units or a futuristic fan on steroids, and if that’s what it took to get a good working purifier we’d do it – but dang it’s nice that they don’t scream “I’M AN AIR PURIFIER.”
The smaller 411 models are compact enough (17″ high, 8″ diameter) that they tuck nicely into corners of our kids’ rooms. Our son’s even fits under his desk and he appreciates the soft white light on the button as a nightlight of sorts. The larger 211 models are bit bulkier (21″ high, 13×13″ square) but they’re still low enough to not draw too much attention to themselves (you can see that in the photo above).
They also don’t draw much attention to themselves in the noise category. Again, we operate ours on low pretty much 24/7 and the fan volume is virtually indetectable. Like a barely-there white noise that’s only heard when you’re really listening for it or standing right next to it. If you crank it up to medium or high speeds, you’ll probably notice it more. To me, the medium speed is like having a tabletop oscillating fan running on low and the high speed is like running the exhaust fan in your bathroom. So nothing too crazy or annoying, but definitely more detectable than the low speed.
Ok, I think that’s literally everything you could ever want to know about our air purifiers. I mean what else could you be wondering? Are they fun to cuddle? Negative. Very bad at being either the little or the big spoon. But they are very entertaining to kids if you place a balloon above them. Thank me for that tip later…
If you want to read a few other product reviews by yours truly, here you go:
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