For the Love of Banquettes (a.k.a. Demolition!)

Do you ever just wake up one beautiful Sunday morning, and over breakfast, decide to knock down a wall? Well…that’s exactly what happened in our house last weekend. I was innocently perusing Pinterest while my husband read the Sunday paper, and the next thing we knew…drywall was flying.

We have been living in our house for over two years now and have wanted a new kitchen since the day we moved in. But, seeing as how we had very little furniture, zero window coverings, and like, two lamps to our name (why did our last house feel so CROWDED I ask you), we’ve had bigger fish to fry. Now…well, now we have a bit more furniture, a few of the windows are covered, and we can at least read a book after dark; however, every single room still has projects to be completed and we are by no means finished furnishing. Seriously, the list of stuff to do in each room is as long as my arm. Nevertheless, the kitchen bugs us and we decided to spur ourselves into action by exposing the studs on one wall. As if we needed more to do.

So, what we REALLY want is a floor to ceiling remodel. We’d like to remove the soffits, get taller cabinets, put in wood flooring and knock down most of the walls to create a completely open floor plan. But because of our aforementioned arm-length list, and because we’re just not QUITE ready to live in that kind of mess with two small kids, and because of our budget…we decided to give ourselves a kitchen we could happily live in for at least five more years. Hey, maybe we’ll love it and never change it (I doubt it), but until we save up the coin and the fortitude to undertake a complete gut-job, we’ve started with this wall. In the end, we hope we can incoporate what we’re gonna do NOW into the final product.

Ok, so here’s the before picture of the wall. (Sidenote: If you ever want to light a fire under yourself to update a room, take a picture of it. As I said, we knew we wanted to change our kitchen since the day we moved in, so we’ve never bothered to decorate it. I mean…Not. One. Picture. So when I saw the room through a camera lens, I was shocked at how PLAIN and awful it has looked and was even more sure my husband should take a hammer to the drywall.)

And here’s the new view.

Now…here’s the million-dollar question. Do we build a peninsula here with bar stools on the kitchen-side? Or do we put in a banquette like one of these?

Coastal Living

House and Home

source unknown

Better Homes and Gardens

Young House Love

Seriously, don’t keep your opinions to yourselves…I wanna know what you think! I know what I’d love, but I’m trying to be practical, too. So…updates will follow but don’t hold your collective breath. We have to get an electrician to move our themostat and some other wiring, and then we’ll take the next steps. That is, unless we get distracted by that arm-length to-do list.