All the Sources From Our Kitchen Renovation

There are so many little decisions that go into a kitchen renovation: cabinet color, backsplash, floor tile, cabinet pulls, countertop material, go-to takeout when you’ve been demoing all day and your back hurts and there’s no way you’re cooking dinner, that kind of thing. Since we posted about the finished kitchen almost a month ago, I’ve had a ton of messages asking for all kinds of sources so let’s do a recap and talk about all of these decisions that went into making this kitchen renovation a reality.

Cabinets (and why we went dark)

A black kitchen was always my goal in this house, but it took some convincing for Alex who had a (valid) fear that it would make the whole space too dark. The people of the internet were also concerned that black cabinets would be hard to keep clean but joke’s on them because I have small children so any color cabinet would be full of grubby fingerprints anyway.

I knew taking out all the walls possible (the final count was three) would bring in enough light to offset the black, and that it would look so good with the marble backsplash, and I was totally right.

We went with shaker cabinets from cabinets.com in the color Iron. They were prepainted and pre-assembled which meant they took up a ton of space in our spare room when they first arrived but could be installed right away. Overall, the quality is really good and there were a couple of drawer fronts that got damaged in shipping but the company sent replacements right away so we’d definitely recommend them.

Countertop

Fun fact: Seeing a tiny 2-inch by 2-inch sample countertop makes it really hard to picture it in your whole damn kitchen and so I went back and forth over this for a ludicrously long time. We also had both grey and beige undertones in the backsplash tile then the flooring that could easily skew pretty gray.

I went down such a rabbit hole of stalking every single photo example of each countertop I thought I liked on every single home renovation forum I could find until we landed on the one: Calacatta Arno quartz.

It has more dramatic veining without being too wild, and has both brown and grey tones that mean it could pull either way (and was a compromise between what we both liked).

We ordered through Home Depot, and they use a local vendor they contract for fabricating and install.

We weren’t very happy with the contractor we had assigned – there were big scratches all over one piece when it arrived, and when they returned it after taking it back away to buff them all out, we had to move and silicone our own island piece because they rushed and put it on crooked.

Still, the stone is beautiful.

Backsplash

The backsplash is Bianco Orion marble picket tile from Floor & Decor and it’s probably my favorite thing about the whole remodel. The variation in color on the sheets is so pretty, though I was conscious to take all the sheets out of their boxes and alternate the lighter, medium, and darker veining ones so it was more even.

This tile was more pricey than we’ve ever ordered at $16-ish a square foot, but I feel like it was 100% worth it.

Floor tile

This one was a bit of a gamble but is probably our most asked-about choice in the whole kitchen renovation. The floor tile is New York Soho Brick from Floor & Decor which is a brick-look porcelain tile.

I was really inspired by the English cottage kitchen vibe with the earthy-looking brick flooring but knew actual brick flooring wasn’t going to be practical in our house, so this is a good easy-to-clean compromise.

We laid it in a herringbone pattern, and I love how it turned out.

Hardware

I feel like nickel finishes are coming back around and I’ve been seeing them everywhere lately but I’m a brass or black gal for life. I wanted brushed brass hardware to contrast with the cabinets and the marble, but it took me testing out about seven different options before I found the knob and pull combo that I wanted for this kitchen renovation.

Island light fixture

The West Elm fixture over the island is a beaut, but oh boy, she was a lot of work. I ordered the pendant which was supposed to come with the four glass cones for the shades but it arrived with just the brass fixture.

I called West Elm and they were like ‘oh no, I don’t know how that happened, we’ll send the four replacements immediately!’ and they did, but they sent ANOTHER BRASS FIXTURE and zero glass shades.

So I called back again and they were sorry again and sent replacements, and the THIRD try I got ANOTHER brass fixture with… you guessed it, no shades. So I tried one more time, with a little less pep in my step if I’m honest (despite the West Elm people being annoyingly nice and helpful each time I called), and they sent another replacement, assuring me they knew what went wrong the last times and that it was fixed.

Then I received the fourth brass fixture and SIXTEEN boxes of glass shades. It was a wild few weeks for the poor UPS driver who delivered and returned a forest’s worth of cardboard to and from my house, but we got there in the end.

I’ll stop using caps lock now because it really is a nice fixture and it’s very first world problems to get too many West Elm deliveries, but damn.

Unfortunately, though, that light was on clearance and isn’t available anymore so I can’t link it.

Runner rug

My favorite thing about this rug – and maybe a non-negotiable in all kitchen rugs for the rest of time – is that it’s washable. It gives a little bit of (albeit muted) color in an otherwise very neutral space, though I will say there’s already a pull in one of the sides but that may be because I keep catching our one-year-old pulling on it and making it worse.

The little things

I think it’s pretty obvious that after the countertops, tile, and cabinets we’d spent quiteeeee a bit of money so a lot of the finishing touches in this kitchen renovation are very budget friendly.

Most of the open shelf decor is thrifted (with a couple of ALDI finds, weirdly), and I decided to make a few of the everyday things into decor by putting dishwasher pods in a pretty glass jar and storing replacement scrubbing brushes into a thrifted wooden bowl.

The space above the stove was looking really blank once the open shelf was styled and needed something, but not something that isn’t safe to put over a cooking area obviously. I landed on this cute wooden magnetic knife rack which was admittedly a splurge at about $70, but makes me feel like a fancy chef every time I look at it.

Here’s a roundup on LTK of the kitchen details I can link (though I’m always an advocate of bringing in the weird thrifted stuff, too):

Phew okay, this was a lot of details about our kitchen renovation but hopefully I’ve answered all the questions and linked all the things. Let me know if I missed anything! If you don’t already, follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our newsletter!

Happy DIYing!