Kitchen update: almost finished!
The kitchen is just about finished … all that’s left is the mosaic tile backsplash, getting the floor polished, installing the wood open shelving and finding a ceiling light fixture.
To see the complete set of pictures taken yesterday, see my Flickr page.

The area above the Kitchenaid mixer is where the shelves will be installed. We’re using 2 48″x15″ IKEA birch countertop pieces with hidden supports. They’ll wrap around the wall bump-out as well. The trim around the window needs to be painted and I’m still trying to decide what to do about curtains.

Those are 2 Target placemats serving as the backsplash behind the cooktop right now. My mom had the brilliant idea of placing them there. I went out and bought enough of them to do the entire kitchen backsplash with these placemats until we get the tile backsplash done. I’m hoping I’ll get to that project sometime soon. The doors in the background are the same yellow as the old kitchen … gotta paint those when we get to the trim.

We LOVE our new Electrolux induction cooktop. It boils water in the blink of an eye and wipes up so easily. In fact, I’m able to place a silicone potholder under my cookware to help keep the cooktop from getting scratched or dirty.

Here’s our mixer with the potential placemat backsplash.

Our new faucet is the Grohe “Minta” and the sink is the Kohler “Verse.” The faucet is beautiful, but I don’t recommend it. The lever is placed so far out that it blocks the 3rd hole of the sink, so we had to swing it out over the sink. The water stream falls short of the sink’s drain - I’m not sure if this is a flaw with the design of the faucet or the sink, but it has the unhappy consequence of creating a horrific splash when the faucet is centered and hits the rim of the drain.

The rope lighting you see peeking out at the top of the cabinets is our over-cabinet lighting. It still needs to be secured to the cabinets.

Who am I?
OH MY GOD!!! I LOVE IT!!!!! You just made me even more excited about doing my kitchen.
yippy skippy. The lighting looks great in the kitchen, and I also love the placemat blacksplash!! Do you get the fan that is over your stove from IKEA? We have to get one of those….
Thanks, Jessie! The fan over the stove is actually a traditional range hood from Bosch. I liked it for its short height - don’t want to bang my head into it while cooking.
WOW! I love it! Very retro and cool!!! This has me rethinking my Country Kitchen theme…
I just found your blog today, and I have to say… I LOVE the placemat idea! We just finished our kitchen except for a few things, most importantly the tile backsplash. Placemats are such a clever temporary solution!
Love the kitchen, posted on flickr about how I have “found” the site. Also think the splashback idea is great.
We are starting to look into replacing the kitchen and love the look of the Abstrakt with Oak tops.
I’m also a mac user so can not use the ikea design site, how did you create the units in sketchup? Did you manage to import them for anywhere?
James
It looks amazing! Love that blue.
Love your kitchen! Question: what is you countertop material? It looks great!
The countertop is just plain black matte Formica. It was installed on site - we couldn’t go with anything prefabricated because our walls are so out-of-whack. It looks great, but it’s difficult to keep it looking clean. Fingerprints show up very easily, as do dried water droplets. I recommend using “Countertop Magic” on it - it seems to create a barrier to stains.
The colour scheme looks really great. The lighting works well, which is often hard to achieve in a kitchen.