DIY’ing my Toronto Home Series:

Mini Kitchen Renovation & How my Honeymoon to Tuscany Inspired our Design Style

If you keep up with my socials, you may recall that we just moved into a home in Toronto! Yay! What I didn’t share online was how quickly excitement turned into overwhelming feelings of buyer’s remorse. After five years in a condo, we were used to having practically non-existent home maintenance responsibilities. And now, we owned a house that needed a lot of TLC.

Hidden Costs and Creative Adjustments

There are always a few surprises when buying a new home, even with a home inspection. In our case, we ended up spending most of our fun decor money on cement and electrical work, so I had to get creative on elevating the space aesthetically.

Inspiration from Tuscany

The aesthetic inspiration of this old Toronto home is our time spent on our honeymoon in Tuscany, because this was one of the most beautiful times of our lives. We wanted to keep the charm, leaving a few rustic elements of the home that reminded me of old world Europe, but I also wanted to modernize many others, creating what I think is the perfect mix of old meets new, while reliving our trip to Italy every day in our Toronto home, or shall I say Villa Martino?

Kitchen as the Starting Point

I wanted to start with the kitchen and customize it while still following a budget, so I set out to Pinterest and my favorite home magazines for inspiration.

left image: https://studio-mcgee.com/

right image: https://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/room-ideas/g191/white-kitchens-63080/

left image: Villa Lena right image: Ryan Street Architecture

BEFORE: We wanted to change the color scheme to a more modern combination which included light white open cabinets on top and charcoal cabinets on the bottom. We went with a natural stone countertop called Crystal Himalaya that tied in with the tiles and warm floors throughout the rest of the house.

Kitchen Selections:

Benjamin Moore paints:

White Dove OC-17 (upper cabinets and wall)

Black Beauty 2128-10 (lower cabinets)

Light Fixture

BUDGET: $5000

Here’s how we made it work:

I cut corners on purchasing new cabinets as you can see, they were solid wood and in decent shape so we just decided to sand and repaint them.
Purchased new appliances on sale
We also went to a countertop shop called Quartz Co and purchased a remnant piece, saving ourselves $1000’s of dollars on our countertop.
We had a contractor install the countertops and relied on our family for the electrical work and plumbing.

Paint – $200

New Oven – $1700

New Light Fixture – $170

New Sink – $400

New Counter – $1200

The whole renovation took about 2 weeks, part-time.

Helpful Resources

For a step-by-step tutorial on how to refinish your countertops, see this IG post here!
For an honest opinion on when it’s a good idea to refinish your cabinets vs. replace them, watch this IG post here!

AFTER THE RENOVATION:

Here is the finished look so far. The project has cost around $4000, and we still have some work to do. My thoughts are while most everything was worth it, I still want to replace the lower cabinet drawers and doors because I feel I want a more modern look as the kitchen is more rustic than I want it to be right now.

That’s all for part 1 of the kitchen renovation and mini home renovation series! There will be more to come, so be sure to follow along for more updates!

@elis.halenko Kitchen glow-up in progress! ✨ We started with a small update, but a little water damage turned it into a full reno. Loving these oak cabinets & the new pantry! What do you think so far? 👇 #fyp #homerenovation #kitchenreno #modernkitchen #IKEAfinds #pantrygoals #homedecor #torontohomes ♬ original sound - Elis Halenko