My Kitchen Remodel with Interiors By McCall

It’s finally finished! After a months long wait to see our 1989 kitchen transformed into 2021, it’s finally complete. And we couldn’t be happier!

Remember our old kitchen? So. Much. Dark. Wood.

And builder grade granite. And more dark wood.

You may remember when I detailed our reasons for hiring Interiors By McCall in this blog post. We couldn’t love her more than we do. She nailed this remodel from start to finish! Our main goal was lighten and brighten a dark, heavily wooded room with minimal demo and sticking within a particular budget. Rather than taking out a wall and rearranging the whole space, we decided we loved the layout as is. It’s open to the family room but needed cohesive design to structure the space.

McCall gave us super cool 3D renderings to use as our blueprint for the design, and this helped tremendously. I’m not able to visualize a finished concept in my mind, so this was a saving grace for me.

AND NOW…..

Here she is, in all her updated glory! 🙌🏼

McCall helped us break up the heavy wood cabinets by adding glass fronts to the top layer of cabinets above the ovens. Our handyman replaced those fronts and now I can display one of my grandmother’s china sets and my serving dishes. We had TWO wine refrigerators in the kitchen and one in the family room wet bar, so we decided to remove one in the kitchen and have a new cabinet built in its place. We now use that space for storing our Vitamix, Omega juicer, and other small appliances. (Did I mention we don’t drink wine? We use the fridges to chill our Topo Chico! Three wine fridges seemed excessive.)

We commissioned a cozy banquette from scratch to create a designated breakfast nook. Mccall recommended we upholster it with (easily cleaned) faux leather, and our seamstress built it to fit the bench seat with pretty channel tufting. Under the bench seat is tons of extra storage! It took a few quotes from woodworkers to get a price within our budget. One quote we got for this space was over $6,000! Needless to say, we kept getting recommendations until we found the right estimate and best craftsmanship. It was worth the extra time to stay within the budget and get what we envisioned.

MCall found gorgeous custom pillows to add to the space, including my favorite Kelly Wearstler print. We added wood window shades to dress up the space even more. (My advice on shades is also to get several quotes…it took a lot of time, but getting three different quotes resulted in me saving almost $1700.)

We switched the bench cushion and chair colors from the original 3D design because the natural colored chairs were backordered for so long. We swapped them out for a grey pair and did a natural colored bench cushion instead. I think it turned out lovely!

We spent a little more than we expected on new electrical outlets and touch screen light switches in tempered glass to blend more seamlessly into the marble, but that meant we had to trim spending in a few other places. We ultimately decided to keep our old barstools and one custom pillow didn’t end up making the cut. We used an older pillow cover we already had with similar colors. Those items can be added later if we feel like the kitchen still needs them. **Side note about electrical: get a true professional and shell out the money for good work. We hired someone initially based on a recommendation, and he made a total mess of our outlets and switches. It cost us a lot of money and time working with him, and then we still had to hire someone who knew what they were doing to fix it all. Costly, annoying mistake to not do more research on a quality electrician. 🙈 Lesson learned.

I know I’m biased, but I am in looooove with our light fixtures. When the bubble fixture in the breakfast nook arrived, the box was so massive that I had a mini freak out. I was afraid McCall recommended a fixture that was too huge for our space and it was going to look crazy! The box took up half of our dining room, which looked terrifying to me. I was a little panicked because I thought I should order a smaller version. BUT- sweet McCall reassured me it would be the right size and yep, the fixture is the perfect size and is my favorite thing in the kitchen now!

Our kitchen is now bright, warm and cozy…all the things. We love eating at the new table and looking out the window at the squirrels and birds while we eat. (We never know what we will see out the window…one day two HUGE vultures showed up.)

We did go over budget slightly, but didn’t overspend on things we knew we could work with that we already own. We love giving this home the love and care it deserves. It’s been a huge blessing, and we can’t wait to do the other spaces! Special thanks to Interiors by McCall for making our dreams come true with this makeover and helping us to do it affordably. We are excited to work with her on the rest of our home sweet home.