Cottage Kitchen Refresh with Ilve Ranges

Today I’m excited to be sharing our cottage kitchen refresh with Ilve! 

This post contains affiliate links. For my full disclosure, click here. This post was sponsored in part by Ilve USA. All opinions are my own.

We got a new Ilve range a few months ago, and I didn’t expect for this to happen – but somehow one change led to several others and I’m so excited to share our entire cottage kitchen refresh with you guys! 

I love how it all came together, and while I plan on creating a blog post with a full review of our Ilve range, today I’d just like to talk about why we went with this brand and how our new stove lead to an entire update of our kitchen. 

About a year ago our old stove started acting up. We love to roast things at high temperatures in the winter time, and the oven would randomly quit in the middle of baking something. I began shopping for new ranges, and I knew that I wanted to invest in a brand that was not only functional, but beautiful as well. 

I love to cook and bake, it’s one of my favorite ways to serve my family. The look on my husband’s face when I pull fresh bread out of the oven is just priceless. Homemade spaghetti sauce bubbling on the stovetop for hours, sausage sizzling on a Saturday morning along with fluffy pancakes…these are the things that make a house a home. 

I had always used the stove that was here when we purchased the home, so choosing a new range was something new and even a bit scary for me. I researched so many different companies and finally settled on Ilve. 

While they may seem pricey to some, these Italian ranges offer the high end look but for half the price of some of the companies I had researched before discovering Ilve. I don’t consider myself a designer, but for someone who values the look and beauty of a space just as much as function, Ilve seemed like the perfect fit. 

I fell in love with the Ilve Majestic series, and we ended up purchasing the dual fuel stainless steel 30” range with brass knobs and trim. This was such a difficult decision for me since Ilve offers so many beautiful colors, but after studying my kitchen we decided that stainless would fit best. I love how the brass accents tie into the brass handles on so many of my copper pots and pans. 

Again, I plan on doing a full review of our range in a future blog post, but for now I want to focus on some of the changes that have taken place in our kitchen over the last few months because of the new stove. 

The first thing we needed to address was the backsplash. When we installed subway tile years ago, we kept the small black backsplash that matched our countertops and simply subway tiled above it. 

Once the new Ilve range was in place, we realized that the black backsplash (which was here when we moved in) was cut off behind the stove area and we had none to replace it. So, we decided to rip it out completely and bring the white subway tile all the way down to the countertops. 

You can see in these photos where we removed it, the orange on the walls is the color that the kitchen was when we moved in. If you’d like to see the full progression of our kitchen over the years, I wrote a whole post about it here!

Thankfully, we were able to utilize some of the black backsplash by putting a piece behind the stove to look like countertop. Because of the way the dual fuel oven had to be hooked up, there was more space between the wall and the range. My husband cut a piece of the black backsplash to size and it perfectly filled the gap that was there! Thank goodness we hadn’t removed that black backsplash sooner, I doubt I ever would have saved it.

After seeing the clean subway tile behind our new range, I no longer wanted the distraction of a microwave above it. The stove was so beautiful and such a focal point in our kitchen that I really wanted to highlight and draw attention to that area instead. 

Since our old microwave had a fan underneath of it, we decided to install a ventless unit underneath of the cabinets and hide it using a gorgeous reclaimed beam from a local barn (watch the YouTube video above to see more).

If you follow me over on Instagram, you know that we rescued several beams from a local barn that was going to be burned down. The sweet owner told us to stop by and pull as many as we wanted, so my Dad and husband took a few trips out there and saved as many as they could. 

As soon as my husband held the beam above the stove, I fell in love with the patina and tone of the wood and I knew I wanted more of that throughout my kitchen. We cut down a few more beams and brought them into the space, and immediately I knew that the other wood tones in my kitchen were too new looking and almost orange in color. 

I plan on writing a future post about these beams, how we cut them down, and how we installed them! Stay tuned, I’ll be sharing all the details soon!

We ended up replacing all of the faux beams with authentic ones, which then lead to another big decision…painting all of the trim a warm gray called Revere Pewter by Benjamin Moore. I also decided that while I was at it, I’d repaint the walls Swiss Coffee by True Value Hardware. 

The cream walls and gray trim complemented the wood tones so beautifully, and I love how fresh and bright this space feels now. My husband also hid the side of the fridge with the same tongue and groove boards that we covered our dishwasher with, and I love the warm gray backdrop for all of my collected kitchen finds. 

And speaking of dishwasher, we actually decided to stain it darker to match the beams. I played around with painting it gray to match the other trim, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that just yet. For now I really love the way the wood tones look throughout the space. 

The pantry of course got an update, too. I shared that last week if you’re interested in checking it out here! 

The decor in our kitchen stayed the same for the most part, but I do have some fun new finds from my sweet friend Rhonda over at Hallstrom Home. I shared her bedding recently in my bedroom, and she was so kind to send some fun kitchen items as well. 

The gorgeous antique bowl and striped towel near the entrance of my kitchen were both from her, along with the French soap near my sink, and the timeless white pitcher next to my rolling pin collection. The basket on the wall came in a set of three, and they were from Rhonda as well! Be sure to check out her amazing Etsy shop for more vintage inspired finds! 🙂 

So what do you guys think of our cottage kitchen refresh? I really love how it all came together. Our new Ilve range is so beautiful and I have just loved cooking and baking with it. I can’t wait to share all the details and my full review of it, soon. 

I hope you enjoyed our cottage kitchen refresh!. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

SHOP THIS POST

[mailerlite_form form_id=2]

PIN IT FOR LATER

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE