Kitchens Galore

Tomorrow evening a kitchen designer will be visiting our home eventhough we decided that any remodeling efforts will not formally begin until after the summer - after the prime real estate season. I have some fun cabinet door samples at home and even more fun engineered stone samples.

What's engineered stone? Stone countertops are hot hot hot, in an interior design sense. I've been told though that stone is porous and can crack, so it takes a bit of maintenance and care, two things I would rather not spend my time doing. As a matter of fact, we were suppose to seal our tile countertops after we moved in (among many other things) and I never got around to doing it (among many other things). We're not the best homeowners - which is one reason I'm not entirely keen on buying a house. Anyway, engineered stone is formulated to look like stone, or concrete, but harder and less porous than the real thing. You can put a hot pot on the countertop and it won't crack. I was told that engineered stone costs the same as the real thing, but we'll see the figures when we talk to the designer.

I've been spending some of my freetime searching for kitchen photos online. Remember this photo I posted a while back?



We still really like this look. It's got our darkwood floors and we like the contrast of the white cabinets and black granite countertops. The only issue with this design is the white cabinets. Our home has antique white trim and our doors are all antique white. We're not about to change our doors, and since our place is so small, the difference in shade is not something that can be ignored. So I decided to find some photos of nice kitchens with antique white cabinets.



I'm pretty sure these cabinets are antique white, although the kinda look yellow to me now. I do like the color scheme, but I'm pretty sure Chainwhip won't go for it. The off-white cabinets just lose some punch when compared to the stark white cabinets, but it's not bad.



This kitchen looks modern fabulous - definitely not Chainwhip's style. The cabinets are labeled as "beige" and not "antique white", but it looks great even with the white floor and walls. That gives me some hope that maybe the reverse will be true, and we can do white cabinets. Or maybe antique white can still look quite modern.

All this research will go down the drain if we decide buy a house or move to Ireland of course.

And just for kicks, here's another kitchen similar to the original design we like. Apparently, it's a pretty popular look.



New appliances... *drool*. Oh, that means more research.