Kitchen Remodel Update: Our New Café Appliances

I can’t believe it has been four years since our kitchen remodeling project in the RI house. It was so much fun. And we still love all of our intentional choices for updating the space and our Café appliances. It is fun to reflect back on all the work we did and be able to enjoy it for years to come. We’ve had a great experience with Café appliances, even using them again in our Vermont house. Over the years I’ve heard from so many people who’ve purchased Café Appliances after seeing our renovation or are thinking about it. I wanted to share this post again with some thoughts after using them for four years.

I think I’ve said it about a million times now, but these appliances look like they were made for our kitchen design. The kitchen layout makes cooking, cleaning and eating feel so natural and enjoyable. When we did the most recent update (paint, hardware, fixtures) we had Café Appliances in mind (I talk more about that here) but I really had no idea just how incredible they’d look in our home. The appliances come in two different designs including Matte White and Matte Black. We pretty much knew right away we wanted to go with Matte White and it just totally brightens up the space. (I do love the Matte Black and am thrilled we were able to use it in our Vermont house.)

Custom cabinets are expensive, so we decided to update the existing cabinetry since they were in good shape and paint them (more on the color here). Hardware was of course our second decision and we went with Brushed Bronze (you can see all the finish options here). It’s funny because in some lighting it looks almost copper, I think because we have a lot of copper accents in the kitchen. While we initially used plaster as a backsplash behind the oven, we eventually decided to add subway tiles in a greenish blue that works well with the cabinet color. We used birch butcher block from Home Depot for our countertop material and it has held up really well.

Kitchen Remodel: Before and After

From left: when we bought the house // first kitchen update // second update (paint, floors, fixtures)

Café Dual-Fuel Double Oven with Convection Range

I was so excited when I found out they made a dual-fuel double oven with convection range. We have natural gas. So I love having a built-in gas cooktop combined with the electric oven. Our old oven was the exact same size but only had five burners and this one has six. Might not seem like a big difference. At first I didn’t think it was, but I promise you, it is. Most notably because the cooktop comes with an integrated griddle option! I must confess we didn’t use it until recently and now we just leave it on because it is a game changer. Perfectly cook pancakes and eggs, stir fry veggies, make a panini, it’s one of our favorite features (especially Craig because he’s a pancake man).

Having the double oven is also ideal because we can cook multiple things at once using different temps if we need to (it was a dream for cooking Christmas dinner-first time we hosted too). How beautiful are those knobs? I just love how well they integrate with the brass and copper accents throughout the kitchen. Not only does the convection range save on cooking time but it is also energy efficient.

Café Stainless Interior Dishwasher

To be honest, I never gave much thought to dishwashers. Our old one didn’t work that great, it was ridiculously loud. But it wasn’t broken, so we didn’t replace it. It wasn’t until our new Café Appliance dishwasher was installed that I realized how amazing they can be. I told Craig I was writing this post and I asked him his thoughts on the dishwasher. He said, well I can tell you one “con” and I was sort of perplexed, “it’s so quiet you have to put your ear right up to it to see if it’s actually running.” Appliance jokes, haha. Seriously though, it’s SO quiet. We could only run our last dishwasher at night because it was so loud you couldn’t hear anything over it.

It also gets dishes SUPER clean, like no need to rinse anything again (ahem old dishwasher) and fast. It also has three racks, two shelves for dishes and a third for silverware (plus a silverware basket on the bottom rack).  One of my favorite features, aside from the fact that it’s basically silent, are the Bottle Jets, specifically designed for your reusable bottles, vases and other harder to clean canisters.

Café French Door Refrigerator with Hot Water Dispenser

You had me at Hot Water Dispenser. I remember watching this demo during the immersion event at the factory in Louisville and it made me giddy. There’s just something about being able to get hot water from the fridge. I think I drink more tea now because of it (and I think Craig makes me tea more often because he likes using it, haha). There’s tons of space in the fridge and freezer with lots of different storage solutions (I’ll do a separate post on how we have it organized). It’s so nice not to have to use the sink faucet and a kettle and have hot water ready to go whenever.

There’s also options for precise fill so you can choose the amount of water you want to dispense, a nice feature for cooking or if you’re trying to keep track of how much water you drink.  It’s also counter depth so has the look of a built in. Which in our tiny kitchen is freakin awesome!

Café Appliances Reviews

It’s been several years now since the appliances were installed. And honestly I can’t say enough good things about them. The overall quality is great and it still looks fresh and modern. There are so many different types of kitchen appliances to choose from and such a wide range, it can be hard to know which ones to choose. Our kitchen renovations and updates over the last several years has made is such an enjoyable place to cook and enjoy meals. Kitchen remodel costs can be incredibly expensive. But doing it over several years, and handling most of the work ourselves helped keep it manageable.

Instead of tearing out the entire kitchen, we worked with the existing layout and saved money on things like kitchen cabinets and countertops by going with a more affordable material. Overall I would definitely recommend Café Appliances again and again. If you’d like to see how the Matte Black Café Appliances look check out our Vermont Kitchen Renovation!

This post is sponsored by Café Appliances. All opinions expressed are my own.