Kitchen Makeover The Final Reveal

It's been more than a year since we renovated the kitchen and I finally took the time to clean it up to give you a little tour. In case you are wondering what it looks like before, I shared the before pictures of our 1960 kitchen with all its glory here.  

There used to be a wall separating the kitchen with the living room:

We had it knocked it down and now there is no barrier between the kitchen and the rest of the house.

We live in a small 1000 square feet (about 92 m2) house; the limited space forced us to carefully choose things that we put in our house, following William Morris' famous saying, "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." 

In this space, we had to make the decision whether to have an island or regular dining table. I still remember the exact conversation I had with hubby.
Me, "I love having an island but isn't it weird to have a house without a dining table?"
Hubby, "The island works as dining table too."
Me, "but what if we have to sell the house in the future and buyers may be hesitant to buy since there's no place to put their dining table?"
Hubby, "Honey, we renovate the house to make it work for us. We can remove it and change it to normal dining table later if we have to sell the house." 

 

That's the end of our conversation. I kept it in mind as I design/ plan the kitchen to make it work for us and our budget, not according to Pinterest, current trend, or other people's taste.

The next time I wonder if should have chosen dining table instead, I just walk over the other side of the island and see the ample storage it provides.

Another thing I opted to not having is pendant lights on top of the island. We have two boys who like to play paper airplane, indoor Frisbee, and basketball inside the house so having pendant lights won't work for us besides, the fluorescent ceiling light provide enough light already.