From Inspiration Photos to the Actual Materials

The difference between what I thought my kitchen would look like and what it actually will look like in the end is still surprising to me.  Choosing a color scheme and all the specific materials is one of those categories where the endless possibilities make decision-making overwhelming.  There are just so many beautiful options!

At first, I couldn't even tell you what I wanted the final kitchen to look like.  So to peg down what I really wanted, I started just browsing photos of beautiful kitchens online.  I stumbled upon the website Houzz.com (soon to become my favorite).  Here, designers post photos of their spaces.  I loved that I could "favorite" photos and organize them in a scrapbook.  After doing this for quite some time I was able to look back over my favorites and establish a pattern of what I liked:  Dark wood floors, classic white cabinets, shiny black counters, maybe a little marble, some chrome for bling, and white backsplashes, all with simple clean lines and pale, cool-colored walls.

Some of my initial inspiration photos collected on Houzz.com

My tastes range from elegant...
I love the pendants over the island, the chrome details, and the crown moldings.
Photo: Wayzata Architects & Designers Alexander Design Group, Inc.

...and classic...
I like this photo for the dark handscraped floors, the farm sink, and the marble counters.
Photo:San Francisco Interior Designers & Decorators Fiorella Design

...to surprisingly modern!
I can't put my finger on it exactly, but I want to live in this kitchen!  While very different from the other photos, it still has the clean lines and the dark and light contrast.  Plus I love the drum pendants.
Photo: Boston Architects & Designers Chang + Sylligardos Architects

The glass pendants make this a more contemporary kitchen.  Actually, I might call this Transitional.  Still love those black shiny countertops.  

Photo: Brantford Interior Designers & Decorators Sarah St. Amand Interior Design - Brantford, Ont.

With a more concrete idea of the look I wanted to achieve, I took a tip from the real designers and started building a sample board.  My first sample board had a sketch of the floor plan, some elevation drawings, a sample of black shiny quartz for the counters, and a collage made from kitchen cabinet pamphlets with exact kinds of materials available at the local home improvement stores.  Notice how the collage has dark wood floors, white cabinets, a black countertop, and stone backsplash.

My first sample board made in Spring 2012 (Yes!  That's right!  I made it before we even closed on the house!)

With my husband having won the cabinetry debate, we agreed on the solid wood Ramsjo style cabinetry from Ikea in white.  On one of our various trips to Ikea we bought a single 12x12 Ramsjo panel door.  This way we could take the panel with us while shopping for tile, paint, etc. and know that the colors and textures would play well together (or not!)

I say "or not" because what I quickly learned with the Ramsjo "white" is that it actually looks pinkish in some color combinations.  Some colors bring out the pink undertone and others do not.  This is because the panel is made of birch wood and the white paint is more of a whitewash.  If we really wanted, we could paint the door fronts.  Lots of people do this to achieve a custom color, but this was an added expense we were hoping to avoid and sort of defeats the purpose of saving money with Ikea door fronts in the first place.

A simple, but beautiful kitchen featuring Ikea's Ramsjo white cabinetry.
Photo: Contemporary Kitchen by Eugene Design-build Firms John Webb Construction and Design

I initially wanted a marble or travertine backsplash, but against the Ramsjo door the marbles looked too blue and all the other stones looked too yellow.  I was not happy with the color combinations at all, but had really fallen in love with the simple Ramsjo panels and wasn't ready to give up on them.

Back to the drawing board!  Browsing for more inspiration photos, I noticed that I gravitated toward kitchens that had gray, pumice, or taupe accent colors.

Second round of inspiration kitchens from Houzz.com

After figuring out that I wasn't going to be able to do a white or stone backsplash, I moved on to the idea of a pale taupe in shiny field tile.
Photo: Wayzata Architects & Designers Alexander Design Group, Inc.

Getting more realistic: A more modest kitchen, closer to what mine might look like.  I love the designer pendants, but would rather they be chrome than gold.  My husband also liked the look and feel of the kitchen, so we're getting closer!
 Photo: Traditional Kitchen by Ellen Grasso Design, LLC

Somewhere along this process I stumbled upon the fabulous website Olioboard.com.  The website allows you to create virtual sample boards.   It lets you design and mock up a room and see what it will look like before you buy anything!  You can search for items by keyword, or import photos of the products you want to try.  Plus, the website is extremely user friendly.  I was able to figure out how to mock up my kitchen in minutes without the help of their tutorial.

A sample board of our Kitchen Renovation created on Olioboard.com.  I found all the pictures by searching for specific products online.  The mock up helps me envision how the final kitchen will look.

So off to the Tile Market to find something unique and beautiful.  (Since realizing that the "Surface Materials" category was the most important to me, I decided that I could splurge a little here!)  I needed the experts at Tile Market to help me with both flooring and a backsplash.  Many of the inspiration kitchens with which I had fallen in love had wood floors.  I really yearned to mimmick this look, but there were two problems.  First, all the wood flooring in our home is original.  It's beautiful and something I want to continue to preserve, but the kitchen is one of the few places where it no longer exists.  The kitchen had a black and white checkered tile pattern when we bought it.  Through demolition we discovered that the tile had been laid over a combination of "harvest gold" linoleum, particle board, and some of the original flooring.  Thus, there was not enough of the original floor in the kitchen that it could even be salvaged and restored.  The only way to have wood flooring in the kitchen would be to lay down a new one.  I knew that it would be impossible to match the original floors in the adjacent dining room and throughout.  Butting up new flooring next to old did not set well with me.  Plus, as much as I love the look, warmth and give of a wooden floor underfoot, tile is much easier to clean and will withstand more traffic.  

I still wanted to achieve the look of a wooden floor, so I looked at the faux wood tiles that have recently flooded the home improvement stores.  I thought that if I chose a tile that looked like wood, but was a drastically different color, I could still get the look I wanted and then it wouldn't look so out of place next to the original wood floors.  My husband disagreed.  "If you want the look of wood, get wood!  Faux wood tiles look tacky and will look dated sooner."  And that's when I discovered the Ragno Revision tile from Italy (of course!)

Ragno Revision porcelain tile flooring in alternating bands of  brown and black.
Photo: Floor Tiles by Sterling Heights Tile, Stone & Countertops World Class Tiles

Ragno's Revision tile has all the characteristics I was looking for.  It's not intended to look like real wood quite in the way that most faux wood tiling does, but it has a slightly textured surface, giving it the look of an old worn floor.  I decided on the "black" tile color as seen in the photo above, but take my word that if you put this tile next to something that is truly black you'll see that it's really a very dark brown color instead.  In fact, we've chosen to use black grout to further emphasize the dark brown quality of the tiles.  The tile color isn't flat either; there are actually strokes of black and brown mixed together.  The variation in color gives it a warm look and feel.  I think it will help to hide dust and dirt more than a solid color would.  But it still has a high lusterous surface!  I love the slightly glossy sheen.  This tile is just what I wanted.   To create the look of wood I chose 12''x48'' tile planks, which we'll lay with a 1/3 alternating offset.

The backsplash tile was harder to narrow down.  I couldn't find anything that mimicked the kitchens in the second round of photos.  Buying the beautiful, but high end Walker Zanger tiles, or getting custom color-matched hand-made tiles from Portland, was out of our budget (again!)  Plus, there was another problem.  Now that I had chosen a non-black, non-wood flooring material, it wasn't going to look right with my shiny black quartz countertops.  The reps at Tile Market pointed out that the combination of black-brown + pinky white + black + who-knows-what-else-backsplash-color was becoming too much and would not look well planned.  So my black quartz countertops were out.

"Hmm.  It doesn't seem like we're making progress here.  I can decide on one product, but then I have to get rid of another.  I'm not getting anywhere!  Alas, the selection of one product produces a domino effect!"

I proceeded to spend my Spring Break on a shopping mission for backsplash tile and countertops.  I have now visited so many tile stores and kitchen supply companies that if you need info, I've probably got it!  Out of desperation, I made the long drive to Floor&Decor Outlet.

Must.  Exhaust.  Every.  Possibility.

I absolutely couldn't believe it when I found a beautiful taupe subway tile there on clearance.  Granted, it was darker than I initially wanted, and I would have preferred a 3x6 size instead of 4x8.  But it was the right shape, the right tone (not too purple, not too brown, not too gray) and at $0.89 a piece, you couldn't beat the price.  I did the math.  I was going to save so much on my backsplash budget with this stuff that I could upgrade to designer lighting!  Sold!  I bought every box they had right off the shelf.

Now all I had left to do was find a countertop.  Looking back over my inspiration photos I noticed that I really gravitated toward marble countertops.  I love the look and cold feel of marble.  But I am also picky and prefer very white marbles with large crystals and very little veining.  The popular carrera marble is too grey for me.  Plus, I lived with a marble countertop in my Riverside apartment and there is a marble vanity in our second bathroom now.  I know first hand how hard it is to keep it looking pristine.  Marble etches when it is exposed to acids.  Even if it's sealed it is not 100% protected.  And it has to be constantly resealed.  Honed marble makes the inevitable etching less noticable, but the trade-off is that the material is more porous.  It will soak up colors and oils like a sponge.  Spill some red white on your honed or untreated marble countertop?  Congratulations - you now have pink marble countertops!  I know from experience that I am just not disciplined enough to care for marble countertops.  And while the etching and staining doesn't really bother me all that much, I fear others would just think I'm dirty.  As great as the stone is for making pasta and pastries, sadly, I don't think marble countertops will work for us.

Granite was out of the question, too; not just because it is more of an upgrade than what our neighborhood will realistically supports, but more so because I think it is too pedestrian and passe.  Everybody has granite these days.  I want something different.  Plus, most granites have a lot of color and crystal variation.  Everybody raves about how no two granite slabs are the same, but to me this just means I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to end up with when it's installed.  I'd rather buy something more predictable and I really don't want so much color.

Quartz became the easy decision for me.  I love that it is cold like marble, but heat/crack/stain resistant like granite.  Plus, it never needs to be sealed.  And because it is a man-made stone, I feel more confident that the product I select based on a small sample will look like I expect it to in the end.  Some quartz brands have very recently come out with a style that appears to have veining like marble, but I'm not quite sold on this yet.

Lady luck must finally be on my side because with the help of the lovely consultant, Donna, at First Coast Kitchen Supply I found Caesarstone's "Atlantic Salt" -- a white quartz with flecks of taupe/gray that compliment the backsplash tiles I found on clearance.

Finally, to round out the color palette, I allowed my husband to offer his interior design skills and pick out a cool grey paint from Sherwin Williams.  I hate the name ("Alpaca"), but bought a sample quart and threw it on half the old kitchen walls before demolition.  Then I placed all the other samples next to it and I have to admit I fell in love!

Our surface materials, shown here in natural day light:
"White" Ramsjo cabinets (Ikea)
"Alpaca" paint color (Sherwin Williams)
"Arrow wood" Brites Series, field tile  (Interceramic)
"Atlantic Salt" quartz countertop (Caesarstone)
"Black" Revision Series, porcelain tile (Ragno)

After making the final selection of materials, I came across this photo on Houzz.com.  With the exception of the floors, I think this might foreshadow what my kitchen will look like.  It's not at all what I initially set out to create, but I love the color combination that we've chosen and cannot wait to see the finished product!

Now we're getting down to my size of house!  Is this what my future kitchen will look like?
Photo: West Hartford Design-build Firms Kitchen + Bath Design + Construction, LLC

So now I want to hear from you.  If you've designed your kitchen, did you go through the same agonizing process of selecting materials?  Did it turn out just as you imagined?