{Photo Source: Backsplash.com}

Last week, I shared our dated kitchen and floor plan of our home. So for this week, I'm going to share my inspiration board for this reno project! I was actually pretty excited as I was doing my research and got a lot of ideas on how we could renovate the house. I mean, come on, this was our first huge renovation project after living here for more than twenty years!

If you've missed my post, be sure to go check it out. The kitchen is awful right? I know. That's why I'm not recapturing them here again. Our plan is to open up the kitchen space so that we can look over the family room and watch the TV while cooking. We also want to brighten up the space because the walls are blocking the natural lights from coming in. That means, possibly taking down the wall and replacing the lighting fixtures. I’d like to keep the kitchen white and dreamy with hardwood cabinetry instead of the current melamine material. We also didn’t like having hardwood flooring in the kitchen area. It was just not practical for our day-to-day use. Oh and how about putting a big island in the middle?

This is how we I want our kitchen to look like.

{Photo Source: Style Me Pretty}

{Photo Source: South Shore Decorating Blog}

But of course, just like what you always see from those home renovation shows on TV, the contractors usually deliver some bad news after a demolition. There's a structural beam inside the wall that we want to take down. If we insist to take it down, it will be quite costly and out of our budget. So, in the end, we have to leave it the way it is. What a bummer! That means, my dream of having an open concept kitchen is now down the drain. We had to figure out how to make our space look open without taking the structural column down. Thanks to the internet, I've gathered a lot of different ideas that might work.

Perhaps, we could open the space up by having a bar with top cabinetry in glass similar to the below. That way, it is no longer a giant wall that separates the kitchen and the family room and we could still look over without removing the structural beam. 
I’ve also researched ways to maximize use of cabinet space since we have a lot of pots and pans, sauces and spices to store. I didn't realize that there're so many creative options out there, like a spice rack and a sink drawer that cleverly utilize every inches so that there’s no wasted space. I also wanted to hide the garbage bin inside the cabinetry. After all, it certainly isn’t pretty to show all the wastes in a beautiful kitchen.

I'm IN LOVE with the herringbone pattern for the kitchen backsplash, it is so modern and chic! But my family seem to be against it, they are more fond of the traditional subway tiles. That's okay. I'll save that for my own kitchen once I get myself a house. For the cabinetry, we are pretty set with the shaker style in white colour with stainless steel knobs and handles. For the countertop, we wanted something more durable, so we opted for quartz instead of granite.

{Photo Source: Pinterest}

So there it is, my inspiration board for the kitchen! What do you guys think? Stay tuned for next week as I share our demolition progress and after pictures!