The 120 year old Stenner Farmhouse has a new kitchen addition! We lived in the house for 15 years with a detached garage and tiny kitchen for our large family of 6. It was cozy to say the least. Last year we finally added the kitchen addition of our dreams and saved over $100k by doing the work ourselves. My Fireman husband is a rockstar when it comes to his handyman skills. Doing the work ourselves took double the time, but it saved us a bundle! YouTube How To videos became our best friend. The wonderful part is that our garage is now attached. Hooray! It was a tough season of building and living in the construction zone, but well worth the trouble. Easy to say that now…right?!?

Before a drop of concrete was poured or a board was nailed, we had the lighting picked out. I found these beauties at https://nellhills.com/. What a beautiful store they have. This pair of lights were my one splurge item. No, we did not splurge on appliances. Our stove is 15 years old and moved in from the old tiny kitchen. We also moved in our old dishwasher and microwave. Although we are loving the new super sized refrigerator, it cost us less than most pay for a standard sized. It’s a lower end builder’s grade appliance with plenty of room for our huge family dinners.

The main cost saver for this project was our concrete countertops. We poured those ourselves in place. What a mess it was! Let us know if you want us to do DIY post on the concrete countertops. I absolutley love them. They are distressed and imperfect, which is exactly what we were looking for. My husband insisted on putting electrical inside the island cubbies and one outlet on the outside. I wasn’t on board with that at first, but now I am so grateful for his wisdom. We were able to hide the smaller appliances in the island and plug in the crockpot filled with cheese dip on game day.

The toughest part of the concrete pour was the farm sink angles. We had to reconfigure the base cabinet in order to hold the weight of the sink. Everything with the counters and sink was custom and time consuming, but they turned out farmhouse fabulous. The window was a must for a plant lady like myself. It has a small ledge for my herb and succulent obsession. The natural light is so beautiful.

After many youtube videos and chats with my friends at http://homedepot.com, I attempted my first tile job in the kitchen addition. I ended up with four tiled areas. The first was the powder room bath, then mudroom floor, dog shower and finally the kitchen back splash. Because we are bee keepers, it was love at first sight when we found this bee hive patterned tile for the backsplash at their store. I struggled with working the tile saw, but figured it out. Our kitchen hardware is the black rubbed bronze, and I couldn’t help but add the copper accents to the room. We can’t get enough of the beautiful copper. As you can see, I mixed all the metal finishes with stainless steel appliances, black bronzed hardware and as much copper as I can get my hands on. No-one likes everything to be matching..right?!?

As our family is now growing, we are so excited to have room to spread out. One of our holiday dinners this past year fed 40 people. It’s so nice to be able to get the entire tribe over at one time. This project was 15 years in the making. We planned it out and stayed on a tight budget. If you are interested in updating or adding on to your kitchen, you can do it! Tackling some of the work yourself can save you a bundle.

Blessings to you my friend!

Lana

XO

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