All up in my kitchen

This is our kitchen. It was one of the main reasons we decided to purchase our townhome. Overheight cabinets, tons of storage space, and a built in paneled fridge and dishwasher were only the icing on the cake. Our (my) favourite part of the kitchen was the size and layout. It’s open and spacious feel and massive island really made it feel like it belonged in a single family house and not a narrow lil townhouse. I also hadn’t seen this type of kitch in any other townhome floorplan, and that made us feel special. Check out this crappy picture below (better ones to come).

The only issue is that I’m not a brown girl. I like my chocolate dark, and that’s about it. I’m a white lover, and it takes one glance at my dining chairs or built in media cabinet to see that I’m colour-averse. I can deal with dark wood floors (although my fave are a bleached grey look that I’ll reserve for another post), but every time I walk into my kitchen, my heart sings a song longing for white cabinets. As a New Kid on the Block would say it ” uh oh oooh oh, uhh oh oh oh, uhh ohh oh oh, the WHITE stuff!”. Ok, that was corny. Anyways, in honour of my white love, here’s a beautiful kitchen that calls to me:

And this one:

I really can’t say that I prefer a traditional shaker style off white cabinet over a super modern glossy bright white one, all I know is that I love white in all its forms, and I’d be happy with pretty much anything (hold the cheap laminate basement grade cabinets of yore). Of course, the hubby and probably the rest of my family would disown me if I tried to overhaul and renovate a 10 month old kitchen. Yes, it sounds crazy. And it kind of is. But a girl can dream, right?

My compromise (and by compromise I mean my mid-to-long term plan) is to go the two tone cabinet route. I’ll keep all of the cabinet bases, the lower cabinet doors, and replace/ refinish the upper cabinets. It is a lot more work than it sounds, because on top of making my uppers white, I’ll also need to use a white veneer/panel along the side of the cabinets (thank GOODNESS the frames/bottoms/insides are all white!). The supplier that did our kitchen originally quoted me over $1500 for the upper cabinets without delivery or installation. And that doesn't even include a new panel for the fridge, so the fridge and the cabinet above it would remain in the espresso colour. Will this even look good? Let’s hope so. Here are some examples of kitchens I found that reflect the general idea in my head:

Until then,  I can only dream of the days I will spend in my glorious kitchen. I am going to *try* to hold myself back for as long as possible, but I have a feeling that I may get antsy and try to refinish the laminate cabinets myself and paint them a glossy white (is that even possible?). I guess the worst that can happen is that I wreck them and have to get my new ones anyways, right?