I truly love every single room in this new build house but if I had to pick, the kitchen just might be my favorite. It’s where Johnny and I spent most of our design budget and it’s where we plan to spend the most time, outside of the bedroom and potentially our home office. Over the past two weeks, the new build update includes a lot of visible changes and it’s so exciting. I swear, there’s nothing like seeing cabinets go into your new home for the first time. Johnny and I were smiling from ear to ear!

[outfit_details]Tweed Mockneck Top, Leather Jacket, Distressed Jeans,
Pointed Leather Flats (use code HKCUNG60 for $60 off), Kendra Scott Earrings[/outfit_details]

KITCHEN CABINETS

Our home isn’t completely custom but we are building it and fortunately, our builder allows for quite a lot of customization. We changed up a few things in our kitchen to give the home a more custom feel and to make it more efficient for us. We upgraded to get white shaker-style cabinets with soft-close hinges throughout the entire home. The most noticeable visual difference is our appliance garage! Instead of standard lower and upper cabinets to the right of the refrigerator, we added custom cabinetry. We wanted sliding cabinet doors that could go inside and three drawers below. We didn’t ask for shelves inside the actual appliance garage since we plan to install those after we figure out the best layout for our small appliances.

I can’t stop dreaming about hardware for this kitchen. I feel like every other week, I go back and forth between wanting black or brass hardware. We know we definitely want pulls and not cups for everything, including cabinets. We might do a cute knob for the shallow drawer under the appliance garage. We also might do different color hardware for the very top cabinets. Who knows!

INTERIOR DOORS

Choosing our doors actually took a little bit of time. To be honest, by the time we got to this phase, Johnny and I were already too close our max budget for design center options and we almost went with standard doors. I want to give a huge thank you to both our designer Toni who I’m collaborating with and our design center rep for pushing us to get these doors. They are eight-feet tall one-panel shaker-style doors. When I saw them sitting in the garage the first day, I instantly fell in love! They are modern and fresh but still traditional at the same time. They are perfect for blending our modern style with some traditional aspects we wanted in our home.

These doors will be painted Sherwin Williams Extra White and we selected black door handles and hardware. Not sure if we plan on swapping out the pantry door handle in the future for something with a bit more character. We’ll see! What I love about Extra White is like the name, it’s pretty darn white but not too stark and sterile. It has a tiny drop of yellow for a touch of warmth and a bit of black to soften it.

WHITE PAINT

Y’all, there are a ridiculous amount of white paints out there. Of course, our builder can paint the walls any color we want but it comes at a cost. At the last minute, the color I wanted all along showed up on the list of standard paint colors and I’m so glad it did! We went with Sherwin Williams Extra White on all interior walls. I couldn’t be happier because Extra White isn’t sterile or stark. While it can look a little cooler, especially in the shade, I love how it doesn’t show up yellow on its own in normal light. It’s been really cool to see how it transitions from day to night and depending on the room, but we are 100 percent happy with it.

For our trim throughout the home, we went with Sherwin Williams Pure White. This actually is a touch softer since it has a touch of yellow and tiny hint of black. That’s why we opted for it on the trim versus on the walls. It’ll be the perfect backdrop for colorful accessories once we move in to add personality.