If you’ve been following me for a bit, you know that we recently built our own home. In 2016, we bought a vacant 5 acre parcel of land, designed our home with an architect and built it from the ground up, doing the finish work ourselves.
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We sold the home we were living in and moved in fall 2018, when it was just a shell, completed to drywall. The plan was always that we would do the interior ourselves, to stay within a tight budget. That included cabinets, counters, sinks, faucets, light fixtures, switches, tile, flooring, and the list goes on. We are 10 months in, and it is still far from complete.
When we first moved in, we used an outdoor laundry sink and a tool bench for a counter, cooked on the bbq and in a toaster oven. The kitchen was a priority! I had gotten 5+ cabinet bids and they ranged from $10k-$30k to do the whole 3,500 sqft house, quite a range!
We ended up going with a local pre-fab cabinet shop called ZMC cabinets. They were able to do the double stacked cabinets, which I really wanted, in addition to being solid wood boxes, soft close, dove tailed, and finished interiors. Our entire cabinet order landed @$12k.
We chose granite countertops. I just love the natural randomness of natural stone, it has so much movement. We did use quartz in the laundry room, bathrooms, and media niche for a clean crisp look. We used a local supplier called 101 Building Supply, chose our slabs, they installed them all in one day just two weeks later, at under $8k for the entire house!
Our appliance suite is all Kitchenaid, bought at a combination of discount retailers to make a set. The faucet is Delta, sink is a FB marketplace find, barstools are from Target, and our pendants are in My Amazon shop .
We weren’t happy with the cabinet above the range top, so I ordered a plywood hood from Etsy in just a primed finish. The finish was done in these steps:
1 coat if paint in Coffee Bean
2 coats of Bronze Patina Paint
Scrub to remove excess patina
2 coats of Satin clear coat
Buttercream on bottom trim
I STRUGGLED to choose a back splash, even put it out on my pages for help. Our cabinets are not a pure white, which pised a challenge. The one I ended up with…none of the above. We found a natural stone laser cut tile from Floor and Decor that had an interesting shape, the right colors, and complemented our countertops.
The hardware and backsplash were 2 things in the house that I felt were worth spending money on to get what we really wanted, but I didn’t have to. The hardware is a brushed nickel design from D. Lawless Hardware
The top crown and bottom trim were some of the last touches. It is far from complete, we still have flooring to install and a few other details, but I finally felt like this room was ready to photograph!
