Kitchen

The kitchen remains in its original footprint with a swinging door to the dining room and a pocket door to the den. The picture above is how it originally appeared. Hurricane Katrina destroyed the first story including the first floor kitchen (there is a small kitchenette on the second story).

I do actually like the post-Katrina choice of cabinets: Thomasville in a dark chocolate. Much better than a lot of homes redone at the time in the style of what-ever-was-in-stock. The brick floors are original. The appliances were decent, but we really do prefer a gas stove. So…

Seemed like a minor miracle to source an appliance with all the supply issues right now. I had wanted this stove, but there was at least a six+ month waiting period from both the manufacturer Ilve and Home Depot that sells them under the Hallman brand name. One morning on my way to work, I thought couldn’t hurt to check WayFair again. They had two showing as instock in the color combination we wanted: white with chrome.

The order went through and I did get my confirmation email. Within a few hours I checked back and they were again sold out and the price had jumped $600. The actual delivery date was pushed back several times, but we received our stove in under a month. When had our plumber onsite ahead of delivery, he checked the gasoline for us. Surprise, there was an existing capped line hiding behind the electric range. We pulled up them specs on the Ilve and he made the necessary adjustments so everything would be set when the stove arrived.

The stove gets a lot of compliments (“kitchen jewelry”) and folks often ask if we like it. Love it thus far! The look is exactly what we were looking for. The burners are powerful—one does have to careful when attempting to simmer. The rotisserie function works well and is super easy to use. I like that it has a fifth middle burner and not a grill option as we have never used those on our previous stoves.

Since the kitchen is on the smallish side (though I like the size actually) and the cabinets dark we wanted to continue with lighter colors to brighten the space. The existing granite was a light gray with salt-and-peppery flecks. It had a lot of stains from not being sealed.

We decided to replace the counters in a white quartz with a light gray marbling. We had used these before in our last house and really like the combination. Given the room size, we opted for a slab backsplash in the same quartz.

It was not a small job. The kitchen has a surprising number of outlets! They were onsite more than 12 hours, but completed the install in one day.

Yes, we do have a thing for collecting Le Creuset in Cerize.

Easter egg alert: that is a corgi butt reflecting in the stove window.