Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Accent lighting with wall lights

We are finding that our home is very dark at night in the kitchen, especially around the sink area...we have four school house style lights over head that can light the room and the stove light, they together don't provide a whole lot of light...I wish we had a few pot lights actually just one above the sink ....but I am not so sure that is even possible with our church conversion home...so I decided to add a bit of lighting that I was going to use in our basement when I finally finish that space...

I installed one wall light above the shelves to the right of the sink and it has made a huge difference...
I will remove the cabinet to the left of the window and add shelves and lighting to the left to mirror what is on the right...evntually...I plan to this spring.



here is the before, we have made a few inexpensive updates so far that have made a big difference visually


when purchasing wall lights make sure you choose a light for your needs, if you need a hardwire version make sure to check if the light it hardwire or plug in, although each version can be easily converted by an electrician. 




Home Depot in store $59  no link available


I am also planning to add a light above the chalkboard at our coffee station....I'm not sure which one to go for though...whatever I do choose will have similar features to the ones I currently have, the same colors of black and brass


Home Depot in store  $39 no link available
this is a strong contender...

I need plug in lights to work in my house as I don't have hard wiring for sconces or wall lamps other than in our hallway here, and I like these lights so they are staying, they are outdoor lights.
 this light is from Home Depot also        


*this post contains some affiliate links for your convenience, they cost you nothing to use them...happy shopping

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Kitchen planning and my top 10 counter top worthy toaster round up high/low

When we moved here to White Wood we had always planned to make some design changes to the kitchen...first let me say that our kitchen is a nice kitchen it is good quality and features a lot of good design, we have a quartz counter and good solid cabinets with nice drawers and pull outs, it is easily the best kitchen from a starting point that I have started with, it's not builder basic at all....but that being said it still isn't my vision of how I would like my kitchen to look, kitchens are so personal...
We do not have funds to make major changes and that isn't necessary...I just want to tweak things and my plans will likey just cost me some sweat equity...as low budget as they get.
We have currently updated the island base with shiplap base trim and paint as well we re-finished the wood reclaimed top...these changes made a huge difference to the look of the kitchen.


Making these changes seems to have toned down the orange that was so very dominant. Our next plans are to remove the modern range hood, it is a good range hood but it is much more modern than my personal style...so I will build a new wood hood cover with some shiplap and reclaimed wood and fan insert with the funds from selling this current range hood. I will also remove the cabinets flanking the range and relocate and use them into the laundry room. I will then replace them with the other closed cabinets that used to flank the sink and add more open shelving to the left of the window. 
The other cabinets are more narrow than the current cabinets so this will allow me more room to add in a wider more prominent range hood to create more of the feature look I am after, especially since out kitchen is so prominent in our great room I want it to be a really beautiful kitchen, a farmhouse style kitchen. 

I have been looking for inspiration for my new hood design, I love these two photos I found on Pinterest, there is almost too much inspiration on pinterest. 


LINK to Pinterest 

Link to pinterest 



There has been a lot of talk around the blogger/instagram world about pretty toasters... and since we keep our toaster out all the time I was feeling we needed an upgrade...I was really loving the Smeg toaster in white or cream but it was out of my price range...I went on the search for the perfect toaster for us...it was difficult to choose honestly...I wanted a four slice toaster as we had only had a 2 slice toaster before and with a family of four it takes forever to toast enough for all of us...


 I am going to rate this toaster 5 stars , it is not only pretty but works very well...I love the bagel setting. 

In my quest to find the perfect toaster for our open concept kitchen I found these ones and they were strong contenders as far as design... here is my round up of my top 10 favourites I found on Amazon... they range in price from $39.00-$500.00 









                                                 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 




                                            7 | 8 | 9 | 10



This Back to Basics toaster was my go to toaster for years and years, I have bought these for family  one Christmas because I loved them so much... I love breakfast food in general, it is my weakness, and this has been an amazing toaster, it boils eggs in three ways, makes poached eggs also, it's great... but its not the prettiest toaster and I have no space or time to be putting away a toaster, for me toasters get some counter real estate, this has always been a function over form thing but now that our kitchen is on display every day I wanted a good looking toaster that will obviously function well for our needs... so it got retired and replaced with the classic white and chrome cuisinart and a new egg cooker...but I would still highly recommend this toaster.

I purchased the elite egg poacher Back to Basics toaster margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /> poacher to replace the egg feature of our old toaster, because these little cookers are amazing at perfectly cooking a medium boiled egg...this little guy can cook up to 7 boiled eggs, two poached eggs and one 3 egg omlete...

Back to the kitchen changes....these will take place in the spring, I am feeling very much in hibernation mode although I will likely tackle a small closet  re-do over the winter if I can find time.


* this post contains affiliate links , purchasing items using these links will not cost you anything extra, but simply helps me to cover cost associated with running this blog, for years I have been purchasing items from Amazon for my personal use and have always has great experiences.