This lovely kitchen from Domino by photographer Melanie Acevedo reminds me that kitchen cabinets don’t have to be white. I wasn’t interested in stained wood or laminate cabinets for our kitchen renovation. I ultimately decided that we needed white painted cabinets to open up our tiny space, but I love these dark, matte, painted cabinets. Especially with the natural plank floor and the creamy stone counter.
I also love the cabinet hardware (we have the same Aubrey pulls from Restoration Hardware in our kitchen) and the inset doors. Inset doors are an expensive cabinet option that Scott and I had to forgo. As inexperienced renovators, we didn’t realize that they were out of our budget until after the first set of bids came in. I will admit that I was a little misty at the time because it also meant that we had to forgo the delightful cabinet latches that you see in the photo above. I had my little heart set on them. But, alas, the latches wouldn’t work with our budget-friendly “frameless” cabinets.
I’d gotten over these missing little touches in our kitchen until I came across this picture again today (sniffle). We made a lot of aesthetic compromises in our renovation to keep the budget under control and most of them really don’t matter. The fact is, we’re just happy to have a functioning kitchen after living for the first 18 months in our home without one.
I know we ALL have our renovation regrets and I thank you for indulging one of mine today. Now, please tell me about your kitchen renovation regrets. What did you have to compromise on and was it worth it? If you could do it all over again (with a bigger budget!), what would you do differently?