We’ve been in our Seattle house for about two weeks and are loving life here in Greenwood. It all feels like absolute magic and we’ve just barely scratched the surface of Salish Sea living. Mostly we’ve been unpacking, hanging artwork, building shelves, walking the dogs and trying to find places to put things in this cute, little closet-less house. Everything in the house is about as setup as it can be without changes so I thought this would be a great time to go through everything as it is and write about what we want to change. The Studio is currently filled with rows of boxes and crates, so this will be a tour of the main house only. As a reminder, the main house is 900 sq ft. (Our GJ house was 2700 sq ft!)
The kitchen:
The kitchen has older Ikea, reddish cabinets, butcher block counter tops, a farmhouse apron sink, no island and no dishwasher. The fridge is counter depth, which I’ve always wanted, and it feels WAY smaller than our last fridge.
What we’ve done so far:
Josh added in some shelves in the awkward space between the cabinets and the wall. Not quite all of my cookbooks fit here, but I’ve got most of the rest on the acrylic cart. We replaced the long wooden hook by the kitchen door with a smaller hook from Anthropologie that used to be at Tangle.
Though I’m not a huge fan of having knives out on display, we saved space in our tiny cabinet drawers by hanging the knives on a magnetic knife rack attached to the fridge. (Seriously, Ikea why in the world do you make drawers with slanted sides. You’ve wasted so much space.)
We had to buy a microwave as our last one was included in our house sale, so to save space we opted for a microwave/airfryer/toaster oven combo from Breville. Our current Breville airfryer/toaster oven (which we’ve loved) will either make its way to FB Marketplace or reside in the studio kitchen.
On my acrylic cart (I love this piece so much – older from CB2) I have a dog station with the charging cords for their collars, a little crate to store poop bags, a few trays for keys/wallets/sunglasses, some cookbooks and a box for shoes.
I was so excited for our new kitchen island to arrive from Wayfair. I ordered it in advance so it was set to be delivered two days after we moved in. Instead we got a crappy looking island with rough wood and a warped piece of marble – definitely not worth the $2500 we spent, so I sent it back and Josh constructed this temporary island out of wire shelves and a piece of plywood that he sanded down and I waxed. It’ll do until I can get something else ordered. I’m going to go with a custom cabinet company and have something built much like our last island, albeit smaller.
My Ratio Eight coffee pot wouldn’t fit on the counter under the upper cabinets so I turned our vintage sideboard into a combo coffee station/bar. I’d love for it to be counter-height, but for now this works well and I was able to store all of my coffee stuff, our large collection of tea, all of the bar tools, most of the glasses, our large collection of bitters, all of the cloth napkins, our cute serving utensils (like cheese knives) and my essential oil collection all in the cabinet.
The large shelf that used to be my TWBF plant shelf houses lots of plants, our art book collection, some extra dishes, some of our wine, candles and other books (gardening, etc). And above window in the dining room I’ve got my vase collection.
Here’s what we plan to change in the short term:
• Have an island built. This could take several months but I plan to have a microwave cabinet on one end, a row of pullout drawers which will face the door, and open shelves which will face the stove. (I’ll keep pots and pans here.) We will scrap the hanging pot rack and the boob light and hang 2-3 pendants over the island. The island will be black and the countertop will be walnut butcher block. (I love having butcher block on an island and fully plan to bang it up, stain it and use it for everything.)
• An 18″ wide panel-ready Bosch dishwasher is currently on its way to us. Because there are just two of us, we opted to go with a smaller dishwasher to preserve cabinet space. When Josh installs the dishwasher, we will replace the water-damaged butcher block above this section of cabinets and extend it all the way to the wall underneath the cookbook shelves.
• One thing we’ve talked about for years was installing a sparkling water dispenser under our sink. If we would have done it back when we talked about it, we’d have paid it off in sparkling water savings by now. (We drink a LOT.) So we prioritized a dispenser in our budget and have one on its way to us. This kills two birds with one stone as the dispenser uses the kitchen faucet to dispense cold, filtered water/cold, filtered sparking water/hot and cold tap water. The current faucet doesn’t work well for us with its narrow spout, no sprayer and dual knobs (such a pain) so I’m excited to get to replace it with something prettier and so much more useable. And I love that the sparkling water doesn’t have to have a separate dispenser AND we’ll be sending so much less waste to the recycling center.
• Replace the table with a walnut, round table. We will also add in a built-in banquette in the corner and find two-three really comfy dining chairs. And swap out the light fixture. If we have bigger gatherings, we can use this larger table with its extra leaves in the studio. I’ve been obsessed with banquette seating for awhile, so I’m excited to get to use it here. I’m thinking maybe velvet or linen for the cushion.
• Add in mini splits and pull out the wall heater.
• Change up the curtains for some kind of slim, chic shade. In the rest of the house I want to do linen, floor length curtains, but it feels like the kitchen should have something that you barely notice.
Here’s what we plan to change in the medium term:
• Pull out the wall between the dining area and the office and replace it with a custom floor-to-ceiling bookcase that’s open on both sides.
• Replace the kitchen cabinets with custom walnut slab cabinets and marble countertops/backsplash. I hate upper cabinets so they will all go and we’ll replace them with open shelving. (Upper cabinets make me feel claustrophobic, plus I have such beautiful dishes, I like to see them.) I’m also not loving the configuration of these Ikea cabinets, the lazy suzan door doesn’t open fully because it gets stuck on the stove and there are very few drawers. I got so spoiled by the pullout drawers and whisper close hinges of our old cabinets. And I’m not a fan of the reddish color or shaker cabinets in general. The cabinets will be bookended by tall pantry cabinets, one where the cookbook shelves are and one on the other side of the fridge which means we need to…
• Move the opening between the kitchen and living room. The opening will shift to where the wall heater and Love painting currently are and mirror the size of the opening nearest the front door (larger). This will allow us to add in a tall bank of pantry cabinets next to the fridge and also make the living room feel a little more open to the kitchen.
More to come!
