ORC Spring 2020: My Tuscan Inspired Kitchen

And the Winner is…

A year ago this time, we were planning to complete numerous overdue projects on our house with the intention of moving back to Philadelphia within 2 years. My dad was 85 at the time and all of our family, including 4 of his siblings (two older and two younger), all still lived in Philly. With our last child graduating from high school in June of 2020 and all of our other children settled into careers, we thought we would like to head home. And then Pop decided he was ready to be with Mom in heaven and everything stopped. Suddenly, there was no rush to move home. What if I actually took my time and molded this house into OUR home? After all, most of our kids are still in Alabama.

Alot changed on June 21, 2019 when Pop left us. Finally I am feeling the resurgence of that love for DIY that he instilled in me many many years ago.

The One Room Challenge

This post kicks off my official participation as a Guest Participant in The One Room Challenge! The One Room Challenge, started by Linda Weinstien of Calling it Home blog, is in its 17th season! The ORC is a biannual event where twenty design influencers are challenged to design a room. While this is my very first ORC. my friend Leslie from Deeply Southern Home is actually one of this season’s featured designers! You can follow along at the ORC blog for this season’s phenomenal designs HERE!

Kitchen Inspiration

When I won a Sinkology sink at The Haven Conference last July, I took that as a sign…let’s start with the kitchen! You can read about the Haven contest and a little about why I selected the kitchen project here.

I had to select between three farmhouse sinks. Something kept telling me…don’t be safe…do something crazy…get the copper sink! So I did!

I chose the Hammered Copper Farmhouse Sink! She came with the All In One Package which included a faucet of my choice, a care kit, and some accessories. Isn’t she lovely?

This beauty is the inspiration for my One Room Challenge Tuscan Inspired Kitchen Upgrade. We started searching for appliances with this copper theme in mind.

Appliances

Initially, I hesitated with the copper decision because I was concerned with a mixed metals conflict. Would stainless appliances match a copper sink? How would black applicances work? Would either of these compliment my fabulous hammered copper farmhouse sink? I’ve seen tons of kitchens with copper sinks and stainless steel appliances. Our current appliances have both stainless steel and black so I did not find either of those choices very exciting. Stainless seemed like the logical choice. While I don’t really think I would mind a mixed metal kitchen, my “be consistent” philosophy kept screaming at me…”those appliances should match that sink”. So I started to look around. Mr. Blu and I visited Home Depot and guess what we found? A stainless option called Tuscan Steel on a limited selection of appliance by Samsung. Tuscan Stainless is a fingerprint resistant brown metallic finish. I took a sample, dragged the sink into the kitchen, and voila! It was very complimentary to my sink…a great match!

We were able to find a full appliance package with options that we loved in Tuscan Stainless Steel! We were the proud owners of new appliances.

I fell in love and things began to take off.

Vision Board

With our new sink and new appliances selected, I was able to continue down the list of items for the kitchen.

Cabinets

When Mr. Blu asked me to paint the kitchen cabinets white several years ago, I thought he was crazy. White? Really? With 5 kids? And pets? It just didn’t seem logical. But it was fabulous. Our kitchen seemed so much larger. But the paint I used just was not durable enough for a kitchen as busy as ours. The doors were scratched and dinged and chipped and in need of a facelift. It would be necessary to repaint the cabinets and I would keep the white.

As I had I had painted the cabinets three years ago, I didn’t want to have to paint them again in another few years, so I decided to up my game and use a more resilient paint. I selected Sherwin Williams Industrial Enamel Protective and Marine Coatings and in pure white.

Flooring

As lovely and high grade as our current basic builder grade vinyl floor is, (I am being totally sarcastic here), my head filled with visions of hardwoods and rustic floors! However, we had to be smart as we’ve had several water leaks over the past years with the garbage disposal, the water line to the refrigerator and the dishwasher all failing at some point causing puddling and settled water on the kitchen floor. Any recurrence would be deathly to a laminate or even hardwood floor. So we selected vinyl planking! Home Depot had a wonderful selection.

And amazingly enough, with our very different design and decor tastes, Mr. Blu and I agreed on a floor!

Countertops

Every woman dreams of expensive beautiful kitchen countertops. I’ve only ever had laminate. With a large family, I just couldn’t justify dumping thousands of dollars into a countertop. I wasn’t convinced that we wouldn’t ding them and stain them so we never indulged. Until now. We found a higher grade beautiful design Corian sample at Home Depot that was on sale for $20 off per square foot! So we jumped on that deal.

Lighting

To be honest, I’ve been so caught up in the sink, the counters, the floors and the appliances that we haven’t actually selected our lighting yet. Our current lighting is outdated. My instinct is to install some sort of can or pendant lighting in front of the stove to replace the flourescent eyesore. This will probably be the last project completed. So it will be the surprise element. Maybe you can help me select the fixtures! I’m thinking copper…of course!

And there you have all of the main elements of my new kitchen!

Below are a few before photos.

We will start with the appliances installation. Tune in next week to see how that goes!