My Dad would always tell me,” Jilly, you have champagne taste and a beer pocketbook.” He’s not wrong. I could pick out any shirt in a store with all the price tags hidden and bar none it’s usually the most expensive one. As I get older I enjoy more simplicity and function over quantity , there are some stylish things that I’m drawn too. Instead of breaking the bank, I love the hunt of finding inexpensive dupes or ways to achieve the look. In the past two years all of my decor in my home falls under one rule: It must tell a story or provide function.

In this blog, I’m telling the story of our kitchen and how it went from unfunctional to creating a space for our family to dance around the island while creating meals (shoutout to Alexa, our DJ).

Our charming 1971 Ranch Style home was definitely outdated and the kitchen was not excluded. But that’s why we wanted that home, it had a story and we saw the potential. I LOVE the character in this house, pocket doors, trellis wall, and chandelier OH MY. I think we lived in this house for three hours before I knew we were going to have update the kitchen to make it functional for us. There were T H R E E layers of psychedelic wallpaper and F I V E layers of drawer and shelf liner. Trust me, I pulled off everyone inch by inch.

We did this kitchen entirely on our own, our own research, and all the materials costing around $2,500. Since we did all the labor, I’m pretty sure our hours were close to matching our cost. First things first, you need to see the B E F O R E.

BEFORE:

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FROM PENINSULA TO DOORWAY

We had the classic “drive thru” window and a peninsula that was so far away from the sink it was not functional for cooking. The previous owners may have used it for seating more than prepping but I love an island so that I don’t have my back turned on the wild ones under 4.

Our first goal was to get rid of the peninsula and create a doorway where the “drive thru” window was. Once we completed that, we changed the backsplash. The previous owner hand painted on the backsplash tile so it was kind of sad to remove that but I wanted to update the cabinets and knew I needed to do both the achieve a more finished look. Once that was completed, we took off the wood paneling and painted the walls.

After searching for what felt like years, it was one for the record, I finally found some very neutral floor tile from Floor & Decor . I love all the wild patterns for tile that are so popular but I wanted something more classic for this kitchen so it didn’t stick out too drastically from the rest of the house. We snagged all we needed on a sale.

CABINET PAINT & HARDWARE

Then I scrubbed, sanded, and painted the cabinets with Heirlooms Traditions Paint. I can’t brag on this stuff enough. It’s incredibly durable for our revolving door of teenagers, house guests and wild girls. Our cabinets are custom solid wood so they were a MASSIVE undertaking and took me months to finish entirely.

We changed the hardware on the cabinets and our faucet broke the week before Christmas so it matched that with the lighting and added a window treatment. I loved the matte look so we did that on lighting and hardware to tie it all together so your eye is drawn to the island.

Beadboard & Wall Paint

Lastly, we added beadboard with a small ledge for the trim. I’ve always loved beadboard and it also gave more of a flow to retro design of the home. We also added beadboard around the new light fixtures to match the walls. The beadboard is painted in Sherwin Williams Alabaster in Semi- Gloss while the Walls are Alabaster Flat. We purchased the Emerald paint for the walls and the Duration for the beadboard. It covered the walls effortlessly with our paint sprayer. I’ll put the link below.

AFTER:

We purchased our backsplash tile and all grout for the backsplash and floor tile from Lowe’s.

My favorite feature of the room is what we built it around, the I S L A N D. Fun fact, I helped run an Amish Furniture store for 5 years when we first moved to Oklahoma. It only intensified my love for furniture and fixtures of champagne taste nature and also hightened my expectations of a product. This island was our checkout counter. When the store closed about three years ago, the owners (who are like parents to me) gifted this to me. I think I cried for a week straight every time I saw it in my kitchen.That store and that season was so very special and I can’t help but laugh every time I’m cooking and run my hand across where I stapled it accidentally instead of paperwork. YIKES, still feel bad about it.

But here it is, timeless as it can be and the most perfect sentimental island for all the conversation in our home that was also the gathering spot for all the Granny Annie’s girls.

Below, I’ll list all the links for the products we purchased. These are affiliate links so if you click on them, it doesn’t increase your cost it just helps support more of my design dream!