I’m so excited about this sweet little cottage kitchen design. This one is more for those of you who are into small spaces, DIY, and leaning into the sweet cobbled-together nature of a vintage cottage, rather than an Amber Interiors style luxury farmhouse kitchen (which I love, obviously). While a lot of things are up in the air, the layout is pretty firm (and feels so good). Y’all, it needs to be very basic. Yes, it needs to function well enough for our team to make lunch, shoot some food posts, bake pizzas and popcorn for my tween kids when they hang out here, and be good enough for a possible long-term family guest in the future, but we aren’t putting in double ovens, ice machines, or even a dishwasher. It’s pared back, but I think it’s perfect for what we need.

If you think it’s odd that we are doing such a large, fun bathroom but keeping this tiny kitchen as-is, you are not alone. We also think it’s funny, and yet it makes sense to us. We are keeping the footprint of the house the same (the OG garden room is big, therefore big bathroom, the OG kitchen is small, therefore small kitchen). And yes, we could have broken up the bathroom into two different rooms, but I’m too excited about the design to do that (and we don’t really need to). We don’t want to re-engineer the house. Nor do we want to spend what it would cost to move the kitchen into the speakeasy (current renovation costs are so astronomical in America). From day one, we’ve said to make this house “work” and be “livable.” I want to design it to be exciting, creatively driven, and fun, but I don’t want to invest too far into the bells and whistles that we just don’t need here (i.e., bar sinks or big dishwashers) and instead invest in what we are super excited about (i.e., stained glass doors). I wish I could properly express what’s in my head and how we are making these decisions, but let’s just say the design of this house is driven by my creative excitement, less about making it a perfect 2026 show home.

P.S. Is anyone else reading Yesteryear right now?? It’s a fictional book that is skyrocketing the best-selling charts about a trad wife influencer who wakes up back in time to be forced to live as an actual pioneer woman trad wife in the 1800s, likely in a house just like this one. Turns out a life before laundry machines, fridges, grocery stores, or ice machines (LOL) was a hard life for women (review in-coming – I’m almost done). It’s reminding me so much of how family likely lived here in this home, which is making me excited to keep it mostly the same, just more functional.

When we first bought the house, the kitchen was spread out on two walls, with a kitchen table likely serving as a food prep surface in the middle. See the original floorplan here:

The little kitchen area was tiny but also adorable (in theory). It’s a shared space with the future small living room, divided by the huge sliding barn door, and we honestly just liked the layout enough to keep it the same. It had two sinks and a wood-fueled oven (that likely heated the house).

The countertops were disintegrating, and there were two sinks, with one being massive and concrete (more of a utility sink, clearly?) Most of it had to go, but we did salvage those shelves and all of the scallop details.

After Demo

The demo took just a few hours, and we did it ourselves (by “ourselves” I mean my brother Ken and Brian did the whole thing, I’m oddly terrified to swing a sledgehammer!).

Once gone, you could see the potential for the footprint, and it’s tight, but very doable. We thought about making the kitchen bigger by making the sliding door opening smaller or bringing it into the living room. We thought about relocating the kitchen altogether, but ultimately we want to stick to the original footprint, which is good enough for whoever cooks here and flows nicely with our work needs and the tweens that might use the speakeasy (the huge, old canning room).

New Layout … The Same, But With Appliances

As you can see, the layout is similar, but now with a fridge tucked under the stair nook and the range where the large utility sink once was on the opposite wall. Traditional kitchen designers are not going to like this vision, but that’s ok. There is no “kitchen work triangle” (or maybe a very odd triangle?) and not even a dishwasher. My MO with appliances is to keep it easy and almost like first-apartment style amenities. No 48″ range, if you know what I mean. The footprint just doesn’t allow for it, and the function of the house doesn’t warrant it, plus we are trying to DIY a lot of this, so the cabinetry has to be basic. So for now we have room for a 20″-24″ slide-in electric range, a 24 – 30″ wall-hung sink, and a fridge on the opposite wall (roughly where the range was). It’s sweet and good enough for me.

I need this kitchen to be efficient for a small space, but still really charming, and contemporary appliances can really pull you into a new era. Also, in case you missed the post, we are likely building our own shelf-style cabinets (at least for one wall of them) so while getting a speed oven and cooktop would be efficient (remember Velinda’s ADU kitchen here – still so genius), I couldn’t make the vibe work (nor would I know how to build the cabinetry to house either of those things). So after months of debating, I’m settling on either a 20″ or 24″ slide-in electric range, most likely black, that will be slightly obscured by the U-shaped kitchen cabinetry. We’ll build the DIY cabinets around it and play with curtains and beadboard to dress them up.

Wait, No Dishwasher?

Nope. Not as of right now. I just don’t think we’ll need it, and I want to save money on the things that I really don’t think we’ll need. There is definitely a chance this might be naive, but my team will be in here for coffee and lunch 2-3 days a week (four of us), and it wouldn’t warrant a daily load. Then my kids will for sure eat pizzas in here (likely on napkins). If someone ends up living here, they would probably want one, but I didn’t have a dishwasher until I was 32, so it will be fine.

Exposed Appliances

As we all know, doing panel-ready anything is very expensive, and since we are doing our own cabinets, we don’t really have that option anyway (way above my low skill level). For the fridge, I’m going to order a plug-in, slide-in Smeg (with no plumbing for water or ice maker). We are still working on the color palette, but those are the three I’m very serious about ordering. It fits so snuggly under the stairs in such a cute way (see renders at the end).

New Old Flooring

We have found and ordered reclaimed wood flooring that matches the walls to put over the old laminate flooring. Why not just take off the laminate and refinish the original wood flooring underneath? Well, the laminate is proving very difficult to get off and leaving so much black icky-ness (we thought it had asbestos, but we got it tested and it doesn’t). But even if that could be taken off (which I’m sure it could with enough elbow grease), the wood flooring is just sitting on the foundation – no subfloor. So it has gaps between the boards and is very irregular and would feel so cold, drafty, and yes, lots of critters could come in. It makes more sense to us to use the original wood flooring as our subfloor and put the reclaimed wood flooring on top (TBH, this might just be the easier but more expensive option, I’m not sure).

Backup… for those who want inside the whole process. For the last 8 months, I had planned on putting down inexpensive unfinished wood flooring and painting a bold pattern on top. But putting down wood flooring just to paint it didn’t make the most sense (but I do lots of things that don’t make sense – see “outhouse” in bathroom, lol). Knowing that this area would get a lot of traffic made me nervous about the long-term success of the painted floor (our painted landing in our house is super chippy and beat up). To seal the deal, we really want to paint patterns on the floor of two rooms that actually have decent original painted wood flooring (the old prop room, the stairs, and the entire upstairs), and having pattern after pattern on the floor felt like a bad, not-so-fun house.

But everything is a domino effect, and once we decided to NOT paint the floor a color and to do the wood flooring instead, having the entire 6 surfaces (including ceiling) be clad in 100% reclaimed/salvaged wood would potentially, maybe be too dark (and boring?). So… that changed what we had planned to do on the walls.

Original Wood Wall Finish

Ok, one of the best things about this cottage is the original fir walls. They need refinishing, sure, and maybe some boards replaced, but we love them. Our plan is to keep them, but to layer beadboard (which is also all over the house) in the fridge nook and take it along the same height line throughout the kitchen. So it’s not covering up too much of the original wood, but it will add a nice color contrast and texture. I wanted it more cottage than cabin, if that makes any sense, and wood on all 6 walls felt like a missed opportunity.

Where We Are Headed!!

HOW FUN IS THAT!!!??? Now, none of these finishes are for sure, but these are the ideas that we are playing with, and we were able to mock them all up in Spoak. I am thinking green, but I’m thinking the upper shelves might be a burgundy (less monochrome). I love the beadboard continuing across and connecting the two spaces to turn it into one room, and then a round table in the middle acting as an additional “kitchen table”. We might have room for an overhang on the little peninsula, but also maybe not. We tweaked the overhead layout to give some space to the sink on the left side, but the size of the sink (and range) is still TBD, so all of that is up in the air. We still need a light fixture, maybe window treatments, etc, but Spoak makes it so incredibly easy to visualize (it’s their Magic Render tool that does most of the heavy lifting – no design school required).

The Fridge Side

We are going to clad over the pink plywood with the reclaimed wood and just have our accent wall be inside the nook (and then continue the beadboard to the other side of the kitchen). How fun is this?

It’s so stinking cute. It’s not even a massive transformation, but these Magic Renders can really make me see it. I’m not sure if I want bright vintage florals for the skirt, or dark and moodier like this. This area will likely be where the coffee maker/bar is, with shelving and underneath for the microwave, etc. We also wanted to see it with the blue Smeg fridge:

I’m not sure this cobalt is right for the space, but it sure is cute. Spoak makes it so easy to swap out different colors to imagine it in your space before taking the plunge. But all of these elements seem pretty easy to execute, honestly. Here are all my debates:

1. Countertops – stone, wood, or some sort of DIY tiled situation? Stone would be the most expensive, but I’d go for it. I found something dark that really sang in here. Wood would be easy, but we sure have a lot of wood. And the only reason I’m considering tile is because there is no tile in here right now, and I LOVE tile. I know that the world gets super angry at tiled countertops, but a gloss and texture/pattern could be fun in here. It’s lowest on my list, though.
2. Do I keep it more monochromatic like this, or add in another color (like a burgundy) to add interest (especially on the shelving wall above the range)?
3. How many skirted countertops are too many? Should I do one run of cabinets more readymade (IKEA or Lowe’s?) and then only have one run of the skirted? That changes a lot if we do that. Less color control, more expensive, etc. But I do fear that this many skirted cabinets might just be too try-hard and messy.
4. I had planned on more brackets with shelving, but I actually really like how Gretch rendered out the below.

We added the beadboard on the front and sides of the peninsula, which helped break up all the fabric and should still really be DIY-able. Maybe we’ll do the peninsula more shallow to allow an overhang for a couple of stools, or maybe not.

What do you think? These Spoak renders are helping the vision so much and getting us all so excited. As of now, I’ve engaged one carpenter to help teach us how to do the cabinets, but if anyone knows anyone in Portland who wants to do this on camera with us, please reach out. We need someone with more skills than us (and ideally all the tools), but not a professional cabinet maker necessarily. I’ve ordered all the wall and flooring wood (from Good Wood, a local, reclaimed wood company in Portland that sells all over the states and has the most beautiful showroom, BTW). And we have lots of moving parts.

Here’s what can happen next:

1. Door and window plan – what we are able to salvage and repair, and what we are replacing. With lots of fun quotes on how much it costs to restore old windows.
2. Full electrical plan – It’s minimal TBH, but still might be interesting?
3. Do you even want to know the final layout of the bathroom? Even I’m sick of debating about this dumb urinal, but happy to tell you where we landed, or if you are the type that likes to wait to find out the sex of a baby til the birth day, we could just wait til the reveal (in hopefully, August). It’s a ….????????

*Photos by Kaitlin Green