#Awwpartment: Colorful Kitchen Reveal

The first completed room in our #Awwpartment is finally here!!! Are you excited for the reveal?! I can’t even believe it’s the same kitchen as before (scroll down a little bit to see the “before” photo). As someone who bakes and is engaged to someone to cooks, it has always been important for us to have a nicer kitchen to work out of. And let me tell you, I’m SO stoked to bake in this kitchen now!!! We live in Brooklyn, NY in a three bedroom 1,000 sq ft apartment, which, believe it or not is pretty large for NYC living. The living room, dining room, and kitchen are all combined into one 500 sq ft room, so we’ve had to figure out how to make the best use of the space we have.

We also don’t own our apartment; we’re renters! Sooo figuring out how to make this space feel like home without investing too much into it or doing anything too permanent has always been a challenge. One thing we’re allowed to do is any kind of painting, so we took to painting the walls and countertops, and put in a peel and stick floor and backsplash for things we’d have to remove when we eventually move. I hope you all love the space, I know Kyle can’t wait to film his new Getting Spicy cooking videos here! Haha!

This is was our kitchen looked like before all of the changes. We used a granite countertop kit to actually paint on the new countertop. So that old, black countertop is under there still somewhere. Ha! And we used a cabinet paint kit to do the cabinets white. We used three coats of paint total and a primer to achieve the look we wanted and it was actually so much easier than we thought it would be! The whole process took about a week, so be prepared for your kitchen to be in disarray for a little while, but it was so much faster than remodeling the whole thing (something we can’t do in a rental anyways).

We had a ton of white space above our cabinets, so we figured we could use it as a place to store dishes and vases that aren’t currently in use. We have a SUPER limited amount of cabinet and closet space in our apartment, in fact, we don’t have any closets at all, so it’s important for us to use the height of our apartment for storage.

Looking like the new rug is cat approved! Ha! Since our kitchen/dining room/living room are all essentially one large room, we decided to use rugs to help break up the space into multiple different areas.

I had been searching for months for colorful hanging planters that I liked, and I finally gave up, taught myself how to macrame by watching YouTube tutorials, and made these two for our kitchen! Would you all want to see a tutorial on how I made them?? Oh, and since I know someone is going to ask (haha!), we use fake plants for two reasons. One: because I do NOT have a green thumb, and two: because our cat tries to eat everything and most of the best looking plants are poisonous to her.

Photos by Kyle Larsen

There you have it!!! It was so weird waking up this morning and feeling like I was in a completely different apartment! I’m definitely not used to the lighter floors yet, but they are a such a big improvement from the floors we started with. All of the changes we made were done with just under $300, so this is totally do-able especially for a rental where you don’t want to put too much money into it. A few of these things aren’t renter friendly like the countertop makeover, but you could always use a marble contact paper to cover up your current counter and it will look just as good! I only wish I had done all of this sooner! Ha!

I was so happy that my friend Abbey from Daily Disco started to redo her apartment kitchen at the same time too. We used the same kits on our counters and cabinets and were able to help each other out along the way! If you don’t already know Abbey, she makes killer embroidered denim jackets and patches, and is a master with an embroidery machine! Her kitchen post went live this week too, so go check it out to see hers!

Let me know if you have any questions about anything we used, all of the sources are listed below!

Furniture & Appliances:

Smeg Refrigerator // Bar Table // Pink Bar Stool // Retro Microwave // Smeg Toaster // White Baskets // Pink Rice Cooker

Decoration:

Yellow Lamp // Hanging Plants // Macrame Planters (DIY Project) // Palm Springs Print // Plant Print // Hello Sunshine Print // Ceramic Palm Leaf (From a Local Store “Friends”) // Hanging Pom Pom Tassel // Blush Woven Basket // Hot Pink Fruit Basket // Dish Towel // Shag Rug

Dishware:

Pink and Blue Vases // Tall Pink Cups (Old CB2) // Dusty Pink Dishware // Rainbow Ombre Vase // Cat Pitcher (Old Anthropologie) // Teapot // Colorful Small Trays // Turquoise Pots and Pans (Old Urban Outfitters) // Lilac Mugs // Banana Salt and Pepper Shakers

Hardware and Paint:

Cabinet Paint Kit // Countertop Paint Kit // Cabinet Knobs // Drawer Pulls (From Ikea and Spray Painted) // Peel and Stick Backsplash // Peel and Stick Vinyl Flooring