Tiny House A-Frame Kitchen Before & After

We are beyond thrilled to be sharing our kitchen before & after makeover with y’all today! We made some small changes that we feel like created a big impact and feels a lot more like us. With Brandon’s love for woodworking and my desire for an open welcoming space to entertain friends, our vision for this space came to life. We also wanted to preserve the “tiny charm” of our home and also be able to cook together with lots of counter space. We love cooking together.

We feel like small kitchens can get a bad wrap, but with the open floor plan our tiny kitchen feels huge, warm, inviting. It feels like the sense of family embraces us and all who come to visit. This tiny house is our forever home (God allowing)  and one where we can create memories together…and of course that begins over a good meal.

 

This is what we started with (Before)

 

And this is what we have now (After)

We wanted to keep the floor plan the same and yet make it feel bigger, brighter and more airy. We also had a desire for more counter space for cooking and entertaining. Playing around with the idea of building an island we then came up with the idea to do a large counter with a breakfast bar. We also went back and forth with counter top ideas… cement, granite, marble or wood. Ultimately we decided on wood as we love the contrast of the dark wood stain and white walls…we went with this theme throughout our entire home to achieve the brighter more airy look + feel.  We also wanted counter tops that can take a beating and look amazing with the more and more meals that were cooked on it.  Thanks to Brandon’s wood working skills we hand crafted and stained the countertop ourselves.

Feels Like a European Restaurant

The above photo highlights the breakfast bar along with our tiny appliances and open shelving to make the space look and feel more open.  When we bought our home the kitchen came with a huge fridge (the largest one on the market) a full size oven and stacked floor to ceiling cabinet work. Huge pieces all taking up so much room for a tiny home. So we ripped out the cabinets and replaced all the appliances with tiny ones, we even added in a dishwasher.  We now have open shelving, which we LOVE. In all of our former homes (rentals) we used to always take off the cabinet doors so we could have open shelving, its just something both of us have always enjoyed.  It now feels like a European restaurant and we love being able to display some of our favorite serving trays and glassware.

From Big Appliances to Tiny

Here is the before with all big appliances and built in cabinets. It also looks closed off with the countertops coming to such and abrupt stop. The entire thing looked and felt so small. 

The open shelving lets us show off some of our favorite pieces… like our popcorn bowl that sees a movie night a least every two weeks.

We have also fallen in love with our tiny oven. It gets hot faster, cooks food more evenly and all around outperforms any other oven we have had – electric and gas included. The other crazy thing is that in all our past large ovens the bottom drawer never had enough room for all our cookie sheets, cake pans, bread pans, pizza stone and more. BUT… this little guy does. It ALL fits below we couldn’t believe it!

Oh and if you look to the left of the oven we have a counter top that can be up for cooking or folded down to open up the kitchen, making easy access to the white cabinets next to it.

Here it is folded down. 

From Farm House Sink to Under Mount Stainless Steel Sink

For our sink we were originally going with a white apron farm sink. But that came to a screeching halt after talking to our parents and grandparents. They warned us of how easy it is to scratch, ding, stain and mark up a white kitchen sink. Which is why the stainless steal sinks came out in the first place. So we went with the under-mount stainless steal instead. We cook with all cast-iron pots so the stainless steal is amazing for us. Because we eat all organic and vegan we make 95% of our meals at home so our kitchen gets a workout everyday and by far the sink is the workhorse.

Our bread box is our old mailbox from when we lived in Florida. It tells the story of our first home as husband and wife. It a little reminder of where we started and the love that keeps us together.

And the last little pride and joy in our tiny kitchen is our Berkey filter which sits next to our tiny fridge.  We filter all of our drinking water through this bad boy. We have used the Berkey for about 2 years now to filter both city and well water for drinking. It has actually spoiled us – when we drink water anywhere else it is so disappointing compared to our Berkey. The Berkey is so fresh and clean.

And that’s it! Cleaning up dinner and sweeping in the evening has even been so enjoyable.