Dear Friend,

Kitchen designs are one of my favorite spaces to create in a home! They are the heart of the home, a gathering place for creativity and connection, and they often lay the foundation of design throughout the entirety of the home.  

The kitchen design for The Alpine Retreat Project in Beech Mountain, NC was the first time we have done a kitchen with a mountain cabin esthetic. The vision for this kitchen, and the home as a whole, was to create a blend of modern elements with traditional rustic charm. We used Pinterest and image search engines to find some inspiration for a design that we thought would achieve this look. 

Here are some of our inspiration pictures:

We thought that bringing in the warm wood toned cabinets was a great way to add the rustic, cabin feel to the kitchen.  We looked at several different wood toned cabinets and ended up picking the color Upton Brown from the JSI cabinetry brand. This is a beautiful chocolate brown color and did not have any of the yellow, red, or orange undertones that we were trying to avoid in our wood tones for the home.

We loved the wood toned cabinets, but we didn’t want the kitchen to feel too dark, so we decided to use white for the upper cabinets, backsplash, and countertops. Our image searches inspired us to continue the wood toned cabinets for the island to create a beautiful two-toned kitchen. I think the darker tones on the bottom help to anchor the space visually. The lighter tones on the upper cabinetry bring a freshness to the space and balance out the darker tones on the lower cabinets. 

There are so many different white colors to choose from. Here is a picture of us comparing the countertop we picked out with three white options: DW = Designer white, BW = Bright white, and AW = Antique white. 

We decided to choose the Designer White Shaker cabinets by KCD. After looking through lots of countertop choices, we ended up selecting a Level 2 Quarts Carrara Marmi. It has a white base with beautiful light gray marble-looking veining. 

Here is the combination that we ended up selecting:

For cabinet hardware, we opted for a more modern look and used a matte black handle pull for both upper and lower cabinets. Using the same hardware in a two-toned kitchen also helps to unify the kitchen and make it look intentionally designed. We used two different sizes of the Jeffrey Alexander Key West pulls.

When install day arrived, we were so excited to see our vision start to come to life! Here are some pictures from the day they installed the cabinets (countertops were installed later)

As the progress of the build continued, countertops were installed, a tile backsplash was added, and all the appliances were installed. When it came time to pick a stain for all of the wood trim in the house, we used the upton brown cabinets as our reference. After trying several different stains, we ended up choosing the Minwax Provincial stain. 

We could not be happier with the finished product of the modern mountain kitchen! The wood tones, white colors, and black accents was the foundational color pallet that was carried through the rest of the home. Here is the finished kitchen:

I hope you enjoyed this modern, mountain cabin kitchen design process! It was so much fun to be a part of, and we look forward to more projects like this in the future!

Let me know in the comments below if you have a cabin style kitchen and what design elements you love the most!

With love,

Katie

Affiliated Links:

Matte Black Hood Fan

French Door Refrigerator

Dishwasher

GE Profile Microwave

GE Microwave Trim Kit

GE 5 Burner Gas Range

Subway Tile

Grout MAPEI Warm Grey

Matte Black Kitchen Faucet

Black Bar Stools

Above Sink Flush Mount Light

Dining table lights