The kitchen

Today, I wanted to share my most favorite room in the house - The Kitchen. It's not only the heart of our home, it's also the area where we spend the most time. See the rest of our home here.

Products pictured below:
- Stainless steel combination wall oven
- Stainless steel french-door refrigerator
- 36" range hood
- 24" stainless steel dishwasher
- 36" black electric cook-top
- Adjustable leatherette bar stools
- Decorative spoon and fork
- Nuwave oven (the best thing I bought for my kitchen!)

Written by the husband:

The design: In general we wanted a large and functional kitchen. We also wanted to ensure that it was designed for entertaining. The kitchen sits between the formal dining room in the front of the house and the kids' play room at the back of the house. There is a large open hallway that connects the three rooms and opens up the kitchen to the great room, as well. To keep an eyes on the kids, we created a pass through between the kitchen and the kids' play room. It truly brings the two rooms together.

The details:

• Since the kitchen sits between the dining room and the kids' play room, it does not get much natural light. To increase the amount of sunlight coming into the kitchen, we put in an oversized window over the sink that faces west and lets lots of late afternoon light into the kitchen.
• We decided not to go with super high-end appliances and ultimately went with Whirlpool Gold for a modern look yet highly reliable pieces.
• The focal point of the kitchen is the large island. The cook top is installed on one end of the island with a stainless steel and glass island hood mounted to the ceiling above. The island counter-top is made of dark vintage black granite (with a leathered texture) that softens the look and feel of the stone.
• Cabinets under the island provide plenty of storage for cookware and a built-in spice rack. The island easily accommodates 6 place settings. We have most of our meals here and often cook, serve and enjoy a meal with the extended family all from the island.

• The backslash is natural Travertine with a band of glass accents. All of the cabinets are stained a dark espresso color. We designed the kitchen to have many bottom cabinet drawers and fewer cabinet doors. This maximizes the storage space and makes it easy to get to everything.
• The white modern style of the bar stools pop against the soft black counter top. The perimeter counter-tops contrast the center island with speckled white and black granite polished to a high-gloss finish.
• The sink, oven, microwave, walk in pantry and refrigerator were all purposefully designed to be at arm’s length or a step or two from one another. The walk in pantry has 4 levels of shelves. The shelves to the right and left are deeper to store larger items such as pots and pans. The center shelves are shallow, but nicely store smaller everyday items. It seems that everyone in the family has their own space for items in the pantry.

As you can tell, we put a lot of efforts into the design and even more so into the details. We absolutely love everything about our kitchen. It's simple yet highly functional. This is where the little one does her homework each night, where we enjoy a meal together, where conversations happen and certainly is our favorite family gathering spot.