The Tropical Contemporary Kitchen

Do you want to see how we transformed this kitchen? I’m going to walk you through a DIY concept presentation that we did for this kitchen here. Let’s dive right in!

So first of all, let’s take a look at the layout. There wasn’t a whole lot that we could do in terms of changing the layout in this space, simply because it is a tiny kitchen. We debated taking down this wall between the kitchen and the living area. However, because the clients have a large sectional and really needed the wall to place that on, we couldn’t lose it and the other problem was going to be with the fridge. So the placement of the gas wasn’t in the budget to move certain things. And if we took out this wall, then the fridge would basically have to go over here, which also wasn’t ideal because then we wouldn’t have very much room for anything else, and it would block our entryway in front of this space.

So you can see we left the layout relatively the same, except we did add this peninsula that the clients wanted. They went to a really narrow table, so that was a fun solution for this space. And then we added in a lot of cabinetry on this back wall.

This right here is our first view of the space. You can see it has this little kind of corner, funky unit, that is not very functional. So a lot of the storage in this kitchen was just not functional. The cabinets don’t go all the way up to the ceiling. We have an empty bulkhead up there. There is a lot of cupboards at the bottom. So then you have to climb in and get on your hands and knees to be able to get this off and see this stuff. There’s a little microwave piece over here beside the fridge, it’s not super functional either.

We wanted to create a lot more function inside of this space. So this is how that wall turned out now. And as you can see, these clients, they used to live in Hawaii. We really wanted a little bit of that inspiration and she really loves the sea glass, so this green sea glass. So we really wanted to pull that into a very contemporary, modern design. So in this case here, we created a bit of an appliance centre right here on the end, that was going to be unusable counter space anyways, because of the door and the way that these chairs were. And we knew we weren’t getting stools and there just wasn’t enough room to have both a dining area and stools. So we opted to have the eat-in kitchen versus having the stools at the peninsula.

And we did a stainless steel hood in here, just really lending to that contemporary feeling. Taking the cabinets all the way up to the ceiling gives us just a lot more storage and a lot more functional storage inside of this space. So if we take a look at this stove wall before, you’ll see that the kitchen feels pretty dark. Right? There’s just this one light in the kitchen. We really want to brighten it up by adding a few pot lights. And you guys know, that I’m not creating airport runways when I’m doing pot lights, I’m creating more functional lighting. So we want to light the stove. We want to let the sink, we want to leave the fridge. We don’t want to just do rows and rows of pot lights because pot lights are directional. They’re actually going to come straight down versus spreading the light.

So this type of fixture, when we have a hanging fixture, we also want to incorporate lights like that because they spread light through the space and create a more even light than pot lights do. So we do a combination in this space.

Let’s take a look at this stove wall here. We took these cabinets all the way over to the wall, and we’ve got two nice rows in here. So the bottom rows here, we did a pull out for a drawer on either side here for things like spices and cooking utensils. This drawer right here can be for their baking sheets to put those all in line. And then a nice big bank of drawers here for pots, pans, and things like that. On the upper is a nice shelf where we could do oils and everything else. And then all of these four cupboards here for random things like Tupperware and all of that kind of good stuff.

If we take a look at our fridge wall, so you can see here, there’s really not a lot of functional cupboards. These were very hard to even get to or use. This thing right here isn’t super functional and it’s all open. So it’s just showing the food and things like that. And the garbage we’ve moved close to the sink, so we don’t need the garbage can there. But we really couldn’t pull the cabinets any further over because you need a good amount of walking space in between the corner of the cabinet here and the corner of your cabinet over here.

So as you can see here, we filled that wall with a piece of art, we really couldn’t put too much on it and brought in more lighting. So in this case here, we’ll have a pot light above the fridge, but also having a wall sconce helps to layer our lighting and creates a much more designer space without a whole lot of added cost. And then we did a floor-to-ceiling pantry over here so that we have a lot more storage inside of this space. Now, on this side here, they just had this little hutch here before and the wall does dip back. So that was a perfect opportunity to do cabinetry straight across without losing too much of our eating space and real estate that way.

The clients had a lot of collectible glasses and barware and things like that so we wanted to create a bar- coffee area for them in this space. So in this case, we only ended up revising this a little bit. We did take the microwave and the toaster oven out, and instead, we did more of a two-in-one oven, so they didn’t need the toaster oven and moved the microwave into the pantry. So these became wine storage units instead, where they could display their wine. So nice, lots of drawers here. We’re adding so much storage into this kitchen and then having two pendant lights above helps us spread the light while also highlighting the bar and creating that working light with the pot light above the bar itself.

We added this beautiful, bold wallpaper across the back here, which helps balance the green sea glass from the other side of the room. Otherwise, this side of the room would look really blend if it was just all in the white. So we wanted to bounce that colour around the space in something that is really fun and bold and reminds us of Hawaii, where they used to be. And then, so there’s a better view of the cabinetry itself, smaller banks of drawers in here for things like K-cup pods and those sorts of things, coffee cups, don’t take up a lot of room. So all of that stuff could go in the smaller drawers and then larger drawers for some of your larger dishes, serving ware, all of that stuff.

Open shelves in the middle to display some of their glasses and barware. And then we did a little custom dog bowl here on the side for all of the pets, for their water and their food. And that is going to be super close to the pantry where their food could get stored.

That’s the kitchen! Hope you enjoyed it. It’s always really fun sharing some of these before and afters with you guys. And once this kitchen is done, we’ll be sure to share the photos with you.