The Food & Wine Guide to Renovating Your Kitchen

Let’s get this out of the way first. The process of renovating your kitchen ranks somewhere at the bottom of the fun list between a nightmare and a migraine, unless you have the means to take four months off and jet to a villa in Saint-Tropez while the most important room in your house undergoes open-heart surgery.

Know this: A renovation is neither a tidy 30-minute HGTV show nor a glossy before-and-after magazine spread. It will change the way you cook. It will test your marriage. It will disrupt the flow of your family. It will cost more than you budgeted for. And it will take longer than you planned for. Fun, huh?

Then why do so many of us choose to do it? Because for cooks like you and me, the kitchen is the heartbeat and creative hub of the home, so we want the space to be as beautiful and functional as possible. 

Renovating can be a little less hard, though, if you know how to plan for it. To that end, I’m going to share lessons that my wife, Jen, and I — first-time renovators, dedicated home cooks, and parents of two school-age children — learned the hard way. My goal is to set you up for success, whether you are planning cosmetic changes within an existing footprint or planning a full demolition and remodel like we did. Get started by understanding the ideal order of operations with our kitchen reno checklist below. 

Then make your own game plan, put together a budget, and, most importantly, spend time researching contractors. Ask around. Talk to your friends about who they hired. Find examples of quality renovations in your town to emulate. The pretty stuff — appliances, flooring, countertops — matter, of course, but finding the right licensed contractor is the single most crucial part of a renovation. You need someone who is accountable, who will give you an honest estimate of the work and an accurate budget that shows you what the overhead and profit will be, and who follows all local municipal regulations and permitting. 

In other words, you need someone like my contractor, Adam Shipley of Tier One Tile and Remodeling in Birmingham, Alabama and Knoxville, Tennessee, who says the best client is an educated one.

I’m harping on this because I hired the wrong person to renovate initially. He was in over his head from the start and didn’t have a license or insurance. I fired him and then found Shipley through word of mouth. He and our kitchen designer, Meredith Sherrill, not only delivered a handsome, utilitarian kitchen that we now cook in six nights a week, but they cared as much about accountability, craftsmanship, and quality work as I do. 

That’s my first piece of advice: Don’t start your renovation off on the wrong foot like we did. There’s a better way. Educate yourself, then make a plan. Here’s how. 

The layout

For our kitchen in Birmingham, Alabama, my wife, Jen, and I wanted to keep the basic footprint of the old kitchen but create more storage and upgrade the look and feel of the space. We took inspiration from our years of working in restaurants and magazine test kitchens and knew from the start that the British firm Devol Kitchens would be our design North Star, even if their cabinetry and hardware were more than we could afford.

We pored over Devol’s brochure and Instagram and visited their New York City showroom, then sat down with Meredith Sherrill, our kitchen designer, to source similar materials that fit our budget and to get her feedback on our appliance wish list. After listening to our needs, Sherrill drew a layout that factored in the contours and constraints of the old kitchen while delivering new design flourishes, like Shaker-inspired cabinetry and smart storage solutions. Here was our plan.

The essential kitchen components

1. Pantry power-up

We wanted more pantry storage for everyday ingredients, school lunches, and snacks, plus dedicated drawers for spices and pots and pans, so we took out a wall oven and microwave to make more room, allowing us to create two symmetrical stacks of cabinets and drawers to the left and right of the range. Vertical cabinets next to the oven provide additional room for storing cutting boards and sheet pans. 

2. Go with the flow

Maybe you’ve heard about the design principle of the work triangle. But in my kitchen, I’ve always appreciated the “work rectangle” that connects my stove, refrigerator, island, and sink so efficiently — everything I need when cooking is only one or two steps away. It reminds me of my favorite restaurant galleys from when I cooked for a living. So we decided not to mess with a good thing here.

3. Island life

We rebuilt the original island and added a Sharp 24-inch microwave drawer (a) to save space. Drawers and cabinets (b) store every small tool and bowl I need for prepping dinner within arm’s reach. Crucially, we created room (c) for a pull-out 13-gallon trash can next to the prep area. The island works for a solo cook and also as a communal space for friends and family to gather around with glasses of wine.

4. Personalize it

Most of our equipment is hidden behind cabinet doors, but we wanted to add a space to showcase more personal touches, so Sherrill recommended an open marble shelf to display personal items that could rotate in and out: Jen’s photography from our travels, treasured cookbooks that inspired my career, vintage Parisian glassware, and mortars and pestles from my small collection, among other items. 

5. Dish duty

We traded an ugly metal double-basin sink (that actually crashed through its housing during the pandemic) in favor of a 36-inch farm sink. We also created an order of operations for dishes. Now we work from dirty (right) to clean (left), with the soap dispenser to the right of the faucet because we’re both right-handed. We installed a new Bosch dishwasher to the bottom left of the sink, where it’s hidden by a panel. 

6. Creative space 

Several years ago, we had a banquette built under the bay window that looks out on the backyard; it has ample bench storage underneath for storing small appliances like a slow cooker, juicer, and waffle maker that don’t get daily use. Our oval kitchen table, a knockoff Saarinen tulip table, fits our family of four perfectly and can comfortably seat up to eight in a pinch. Bonus: It serves as a homework table and creative space.

The details

Command station

The 54- x 50-inch island (top of the page) sits at the center of the action and is our staging ground for dinner prep and entertaining, and also where we set out meals buffet-style. The top is a slab of walnut from the old kitchen that we had refinished. The base is painted Benjamin Moore Azores, a color that we chose to add personality to the space and help tie together the black slate floor with the cabinets and trim, painted in Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace, and the White Dove walls. 

Keep ’em sharp 

We store our everyday knives (from Messermeister, New West KnifeWorks, and Nacionale Bladeworks) on Ikea magnets installed next to the stove, within easy reach. Wooden utensils go in a vintage crock. A proofing basket and salad bowl hold just enough vegetables and alliums for this week’s cooking. The Blanc Creatives carbon steel skillet never leaves the stove.

Prep area 

I stack two thick cutting boards on top of one another so I don’t have to crane my neck while chopping. A wide drawer with organizers fits all of our essential tools for daily tasks, and a cabinet below houses mixing and prep bowls and measuring cups. To the bottom right is the drawer for a standard 13-gallon trash container to make cleanup easy. 

Range life

A GE Monogram 36-Inch Dual-Fuel Professional Range with six burners anchors this space and delivers 23,000 BTUs. The oven can fit four half sheet pans when necessary. Danby marble, sourced from a quarry in Vermont, adds moody texture and “blue cheese” veining from the bottom of the backsplash to the top, where we boxed in a GE Monogram hood insert.

A Devol brass rail holds tools like ladles, a spider for straining pasta, dried herbs, and decorative family heirlooms like a hand mixer from Jen’s grandmother Bubbe. Cooking oils, two kinds of salt, a pepper grinder, and a bowl of MSG always stand at the ready. Montauk Black slate floors stay cool in the summer, a bonus for us and our family dog, Birdie. 

The corner

A 36-inch fireclay apron-front farmhouse sink from Shaws of Darwen with a Newport Brass faucet provides ample room for watering plants and washing heavy-duty pots and pans. We use a Five Two over-the-sink drying rack and also line the marble on the left side of the sink with a thin, removable silicone sheet to prevent water damage. The marble shelf showcases Jen’s photography, vintage glassware, pitchers, mortars and pestles, and some of our favorite seasonal cookbooks by authors we love, like Edna Lewis, Judy Rodgers, Justin Smillie, Frank Stitt, and Jonathan Waxman.

Pros will tell you to hide all of your small appliances, but our Breville Joule Oven Air Fryer Pro is the workhorse of our kitchen, so why not keep it within arm’s reach? In the corner, a pot of thyme and two of our favorite wines — Domaine de Fontsainte Gris de Gris and Domaine Tempier Bandol Rosé — hide a Sonos speaker. The clock is from Rejuvenation.

Convenience station

I’ve worked my way through every coffee trend of the past 20 years and through the past five have stuck with the consistency and convenience of Breville’s Nespresso systems. Our cabinet company, The Refinery, installed a drawer in the pantry to house the coffee and tea station, and our electrician put in an outlet in the back to service it. Duralex glassware pulls double duty as espresso cups. 

Landing pads

An antique primitive bench from Texas sits under the window to hold more cookbooks and plants. We visit the local farmers market every Saturday morning and display the week’s produce on the counter. A brass Greek cup on the wall holds dried flowers and reminds us of our travels.

Handles and pulls

There’s a tactile through line of weathered brass throughout our kitchen, including these drawer pulls and knobs from Rejuvenation — they look especially good against the blue-gray-green of Benjamin Moore Azores on the kitchen island.

The kitchen renovation checklist

While every renovation and design is different depending on space, budget, and taste, this general list will help you prepare for your renovation. These are the things that I wish I had known before undergoing our own kitchen project.