Our new house is really nice. It’s by far the nicest starting point we’ve ever had. The previous owner took wonderful care of everything and did a lot of great updates (including windows — who does windows other than me?!). She did a beautiful job decorating in her style. Now it’s time for us to make it our own.
The kitchen is a great space. We does overlook the front and side yard, its open to the family room, gorgeous new(ish) cabinets. It’s also very traditional and leaning a bit old world. I love the look — in other people’s homes. The longer we’ve been here, the more I’ve realized that although I really like the color yellow, I don’t love floor to ceiling yellow. Moral of the story, we’re making some big changes.
Here’s where we started:
A great place to start the transformation was with cabinet knobs. Although the knobs were high quality, neither of us were into the darkness. Our theme for the make-over is “light and elegant”. We’re updating with a lot of throwbacks to the days when skilled craftsmen put their heart and soul into each item they created. We’re not on a “heart and soul” budget, so we went a reproduction from D.Lawless Hardware, where I had ordered a whole house worth of knobs for a craftsman period house I did in 2006. If you put their knobs side-by-side with the higher-end knobs, like Emtek (who also makes the style we chose), you can tell the difference. The Emtek knobs are beautiful and flawless. The D.Lawless versions have some bubbles and imperfections. I don’t mind them at all. I think it adds character and adds to the heritage vibe I’m trying to bring out of a traditional 1990s house. I did have to drill out each hole slightly to accommodate these, and, like all other cabinet knob installs I’ve done, a few drawers needed different lengths of screws. I have these on hand after doing this a few times, but you can also buy different length hardware screws at the big box stores.
Here’s a side by side of the new & old:
And mini-reveal of the new look:
