It’s week 4 of the One Room Challenge, and it’s island time over here. That’s not to say that we are taking a leisurely stroll through this kitchen makeover… there is no such thing as leisurely when you’re redesigning a space in under six week. Instead, we’re planning to take our kitchen island from boring to bold, but it’s going to be a race to the finish line to get this project done!
When we started planning the redesign of our kitchen dining area, I knew I wanted to make the space feel more like us. I wanted it to better reflect our current style. But I had to take a step back and ask myself what that really means. I started thinking about what spaces in our house make me the happiest right now, and what it is about those spaces that I love. I keep coming back to one answer – our master bathroom!
A couple of years I did a One Room Challenge makeover of our “builder beige” master bathroom and transformed it into a Graphic Glam retreat. We painted the walls a light gray, added graphic black and white cement tile behind new white framed mirrors, and hung statement black and white light fixtures.
I added some big pops of color – like the blue sky in the large photo mural – but the black, white, and gray color scheme gives the bathroom a chic and sophisticated look that is exactly what I’m craving in our kitchen and dining area.
I have no doubt that lots of color will find it’s way back into our kitchen – but I want those colors to be accents rather than everywhere. I plan to keep the charcoal colored walls on two sides of the kitchen, and the chalkboard wall definitely stays as well, but I’m ready to be done with the teal walls. Those will be replaced with the same light gray that I used in the master bathroom – Metropolitan Gray, which Benjamin Moore just named the 2019 Color of the Year.
And then I want to go BOLD on the kitchen island! Like the wall of black and white tile in the bathroom, the island this is the perfect space to make a statement in the kitchen. It will be a focal point in the center of the room, but because it’s a limited space below the counter, it won’t be too much. And the clear acrylic barstools – which I’m definitely keeping – won’t distract from what ever we choose to do in this space. *This post contains some affiliate links.
I thought about adding wallpaper to the front of the island {and I still LOVE the temporary wallpaper we added in the laundry closet}, but since there will be lots of little feet kicking this wall as they climb on and off of the barstools, and swing their legs while doing homework here, I don’t think wallpaper would be a durable enough choice.
Instead, I’m thinking tile, and I’ve found some great inspiration photos!
Which inspiration tile do you like best? The first one is actually my favorite, but laid in a different pattern. My mom chose this same tile for one of the bathrooms in her new house that’s currently under construction, but each tile is turned 90 degrees to create a completely different look. This same tile can also be laid in a chevron tile, as well, but I like the pattern my mom chose best.
Unfortunately, just for this relatively small space on our kitchen island, that tile would cost me nearly $1200, which is WAY out of the budget.
A lot of the other graphic tiles options we found were also pretty expensive, but I finally found two options that I really like that don’t bust the budget. The large format 24×24 tiles on the left would cost about $250 to cover the island, and the one of the right (12×12) would come in around $550.
We picked one… then we changed our mind and ordered the other… then we found out that the one we ordered was back ordered because the entire lot that shipped was defective… and finally we decided we like the original one best after all… so we ended up right back where we started. Which one did we end up choosing? You’ll have to wait to see…
Scott’s dad is going to help us install the tile, and I’m excited to finally check learning to tile off of my DIY bucket list. BUT we won’t we installing it until the weekend after Halloween, a mere 4 days before the end of the One Room Challenge. So the new definition of “island time” around here means down to the wire! Cross you fingers for me that we don’t run into any problems or this project won’t meet the deadline.
Be sure to head over the One Room Challenge website to see how everyone else is doing in week 4! It’s fun to see how these amazing projects are starting to come together!
