What are those crazy kids up to now?!

So hubby and I are in the process of painting each room in our house. As I'm sure you all know, paint is the cheapest & easiest way to refresh your home, so it's a great way to start! We painted our bedroom not too long ago, so we decided to move on to the next room, the KITCHEN! I've had lots of crazy ideas in my head about my "dream kitchen, even though hubby is the cook in this house!

I have tons of inspiration pics, but I'll spare you & show only my three favorites. Let's go through them! 

From the one below, I love the cabinet color & the effortless way they combined multiple metal finishes in such a small space. It flows very well. Hubby asked me if you can mix metals, and this picture says yes!

(click pic for source!)

I'm so in love with Erika's kitchen! The color of the cabinets, the roman shades, the casual & cozy feel of the room - it's beautiful!

(click pic for source!)

And Emily's kitchen. I'm taking note of the glass front upper cabinets, the honed black granite counter top & the bin pulls on the drawers! 

(click pic for source!)

With all of these kitchens in mind & with the chef of the house on board, we've come up with a plan. Actually, we painted the kitchen THEN came up with a plan, but so far it's working! 

• The walls in the great room (kitchen, living & dining rooms) are Sherwin Williams Agreeable Gray.
• We're painting the cabinets Sherwin Williams Brainstorm Bronze. To decide on the color, we followed a tip of Erika's by painting a piece of cardboard with a few different samples and checking them out throughout different times of day. The darkest color is the one we like the best! 
• The counters will be honed black "granicrete". It's a concrete surface made to resemble granite at a fraction of the cost. I'm really excited about this! 
• We're going with a carrera marble backsplash - a splurge -but since we'll be saving with everything else, I think it's absolutely worth it. 
• Here's the first metal in the room: copper pendants. They give a slight nod to traditional, which I'm beginning to find myself more attracted to. 
• By far my favorite part of this makeover is the brass hardware! That inspiration picture really made me open my eyes to it
• Color will come in through the counter stools & our dishes. We've had these dishes since we got married, so I want to show them off!
• And the icing on this oh-so-yummy cake, the faucet. Bridge & totally trad, I'm so in love! 

Other things of note:

• The microwave-over-the-range situation does not work in this house. It's coming down & a nice hood will replace it. (We have a new place for the microwave too, don't worry!)
• We currently have a weird wall-bar thing, that's coming down too. We're going to have one continuous counter top for the our peninsula. I think it'll help make the space feel less choppy.
• And last but not least, we're adding open shelving to the right side of the range!

So here's our official before photo:

Let the fun start!!!