Here’s a kitchen from Country Living’s book 500 Kitchen Ideas: Style, Function, & Charm. John and I are planning to move into his parents’ condo in the coming months, and I’ve so been looking forward to sprucing it up and turning it into my dream home. Having lived in countless apartments these past seven years and having visited countless of our friends’ apartments, I’ve noticed that we all tend to decorate very contemporary. While it could very much be a matter of personal taste, personally speaking, I had previously opted for the contemporary look due to: 1. Seeing overwhelming amounts of cloud couches and curved glass coffee tables on Pinterest, 2. Not wanting to spend the money on the “good furniture” while in a rental, and 3. Believing the interior of apartments had to match the exterior.
A few years back, a girlfriend and I stayed at a guest suite in Carmel-by-the-Sea. It was a little second-story studio detached from the owner’s home, definitely no more than 400 square feet. It had a little dining nook for two by the door, a quaint living area with a working fireplace, the most comfortable bed, and a tiny kitchen with black-and-white tiled countertops styled with blue and red decor. Out on the terrace, there was a lovely view of their rose garden and the sounds of birds chirping in the height of spring.
I still reminisce about how cozy, warm, and, dare I say, luxurious being in that studio felt. I’ve since had an awakening–a craving for warmth, brightness, hominess in whatever space I had to work with. I started pulling inspiration from movie sets–think Nancy Meyers films, whose interiors are notably having a moment–old shows from the ’50s and ’60s whose kitchens were small but lovingly decorated, and books, novels, anything I could get a hold of featuring cottages, farmhouses, cabins, lakehouses, and beachhouses.
I recently bought this copy of 500 Kitchen Ideas: Style, Function, & Charm off Thriftbooks.com (99.9% of my books are secondhand), and I’m not exaggerating when I say I gasped the second I flipped it open. Five hundred of the most beautiful kitchens I have ever seen. So, I thought I would scan and upload one every Friday so that others can appreciate them, and let them occupy some space online, and maybe slowly crowd out the cloud couches.