It’s been mere hours since we’ve laid down the hammer and wallpaper, but we’re too excited to not tell everyone about our most recent adventure. FOX40 and their new show, Home Free, asked our Design Lab to take part in a mini challenge, hosted right here in our own backyard. The challenge? Refreshing a room that needs a serious pick-me-up in order to promote Home Free and Homes On Holmes (another stellar show on FOX). Submissions began pouring in with Sacramento residents’ cries for help with their disastrous dens and chaotic kitchens. If it were up to us, we would’ve come to the rescue of every submission we were able to catch. But alas, this was a contest and contest’s require winners. After some tough decision making, we reached a verdict. Our winner was Larry Wells from Sacramento with a kitchen that begged for attention. As you can see, the room was quite vintage with stark emerald paint, generic cabinetry, and lackluster linoleum.
After a tour or two through the tightly enclosed kitchen, we talked with the winner about his vision for the space and what we could do with our $5oo gift card from Home Depot. We decided to update the space with all of the contemporary luxury we could afford: new lighting, flooring, fixtures, and shelving. To modernize the room we decided to tear out the overhead cabinetry and replace it with streamlined pendant lighting. We kept the butcher block counter top intact but switched out all of the cabinet’s hardware for a necessary face-lift. Because the homeowners liked the idea of contrast, our lab went to work on a fun contrasting pattern for the trim and backsplash and decided to also rip out the corner cabinetry and install an open face shelf for some much needed transparency. The flooring and electrical were supplied by our friends at Parks Electric and Natural Stone Design Gallery who really helped to make this all happen. Via gracious donation we were able to install awesome hardwood-like tiling in the kitchen for a contemporary update and replace the overhead lighting with gorgeous free-hanging pendants. Seriously, these guys are the best.
While the dream team was focused on ripping and repairing, we took off to Home Depot to find the fun stuff i.e. wallpaper, shelving, and accessories. Relying heavily on our building guru, dream-giver extraordinaire, Rob, we were able to grab all of the materials necessary to get the job done and just in the nick of time (did we mention that we had maybe 36 hours?). Throwing caution to the wind, we tiled, wired, installed, painted, wallpapered, rebuilt, and accessorized the homeowner’s kitchen in record-breaking time.
We were so pleased with the turn out (and so was Larry and his wife!). After a week of chaos and construction, our team managed to flip this rusty room into a crowd-pleasing kitchen. We chose to add chevron striped wallpaper as back splash for contrast and color, swapped out hardware, and re-tiled the floors for some fun texture. The end product was a modern, upbeat room with plenty of shelving and space for the couple’s next get together.
Once again, HUGE thank you to the guys at Parks Electric and Natural Stone Design Gallery for their manpower and product. Thank you to Rob Brazier, our KKDL handyman for his tireless effort and constant willingness to help us out. And thank you to FOX40 and the viewers at home for choosing us to help Larry and his wife Refresh their Room!
