Renovating the kitchen in our Studio cottage was a total gut job! The existing space left us with no choice but to redo everything: the plumbing, electrical system, windows, doors, and kitchen appliances.
Everything had to be designed, re-built, and created from scratch.
Since we couldn’t start renovating one part of the studio cottage without affecting another, we first stripped the entire interior down the rafters.
This is an intense job and I highly recommend wearing a breathing mask, body suit that covers you completely, and gloves. It’s a very dirty job and we even found dead animals in the walls and bats in the bell-free! The smell was disgusting but once it was gutted it left an awesome, wide-open space for us to create freely.
After deciding on a color scheme—light green and white— and overall design, we set out to create a bright, functional, open kitchen area. We got a great price for a kitchenette with both a refrigerator, stove/oven, and a sink and installed it after putting new plumbing and walls in.
Next, we scraped the existing floor to recover the wood underneath.
We were lucky and found that the wood was in great shape! All it needed was a good solid sanding and staining. Check this link to learn how to do this yourself. Going along with our color scheme, we installed white wainscoting and new window frames and painted the walls a very light green.
We added a tiffany style french light fixture that I found at Home Depot and a kitchen light for about the sink.
Since the combined kitchen unit provided us with a little extra room, we were able to put in an on-demand hot water heating system.
We even ended up hand-building a side cabinet that matched the white wainscoting to cover the system and give us a great wooden cutting board surface.
I also designed a small table for the side area with the help of a craftsman I found in NYC. I gave him the dimensions and picked out the wood and iron for the base, and he made it within a week.
By this point, everything was coming together and we finally put in white molding and white floating shelves from Pottery Barn as finishing touches.
Can you believe the total transformation? I just love this kitchen and can’t wait to tell you about the rest of the Studio renovation. Stay tuned..
