Greige is a colour between beige and grey. So technically, this isn’t going to be a greige kitchen. Then why am I calling it a greige kitchen? Because right now it’s a beige kitchen. The builder has given us the counters and wall tiles, all in beige. Since they’re perfectly fine, we don’t want to destroy them uselessly. So we’re keeping them.

But Krishna loves her greys. She’s been dreaming of a Scandinavian style home in greys, whites and lots of light pinewood. So we’re going to add the greys to the kitchen to make her happy. And that’s why we’re calling it greige… coz it will be beige + grey!

But we’re jumping the gun and skipping too many steps here. So let’s start at the very beginning.. a very good place to start! (Aargh.. now I’m singing!)

The Existing Kitchen:

This is the existing plan of the kitchen.

There’s basically one thing I don’t like about it, that the entrance of the kitchen is from the living room. Considering they have an entrance passage to the left of the kitchen that is almost 17′ long (yup, that’s not a typo.. it’s SEVENTEEN feet!), it makes more sense to have the entrance from this passage. Firstly, it will break down the length of that passage. Second, if we shut the door on the living room side it gives us a longer wall there, to place our sofa and other living room furniture. And third, it gives the kitchen some privacy.

Here is a pic of the kitchen to give you an idea of what I’m talking about. That’s the entrance to the kitchen and as you can see, it looks straight into the living and dining area… right up to the bedroom beyond. Shutting this door will shield us from that view.

This is the counter on the opposite side. The tiles and counter are currently all in beige.

Krishna basically had 2 requirements for this kitchen. One, she wanted the grey. The second thing she wanted was a breakfast table. We gave her some options to choose from.

Option 1:

The first option was to not shut that living room door fully. We’d shut it till about waist height and make that the breakfast counter. We would pull down the passage wall to create an entrance from that side, without fully blocking the original door.

The kitchen would look something like this. The breakfast table would open into the living room and you would have to walk around it, into the passage to enter the kitchen.

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Option 2:

This option was similar to the first one, only we closed the breakfast counter from the passage side. The entrance would still be from the passage and the counter would still open into the living room. Only this option would give a little more privacy by blocking a part of the view into the kitchen.

It would look something like this.

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Option 3:

If Krishna didn’t want an open kitchen at all, then this would be the option to go with. We block the entrance door from the living room side, and give a breakfast table on that wall from the inside of the kitchen.

The entrance to the kitchen is from the passage, and there is complete privacy from the living room side. It would look something like this.

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Option 4:

This was my least favourite option. If Krishna wanted the breakfast table on the inside of the kitchen, yet didn’t want the person sitting at the table to be inside, then this could be an option. The passage is wide enough to place a breakfast stool in it.

It would look something like this. And from the pic it’s obvious why I wasn’t so enthusiastic about it. The breakfast table becomes too small and the space in front of it is completely wasted.

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The Final Kitchen Layout:

Though Krishna was really tempted to go with the breakfast table opening into the living room she realised she really didn’t want an open kitchen. So this is the layout we eventually finalised.

We would close the living room entrance with a brick wall and break open the wall into the passage to provide an entrance from there. The breakfast table would face the new wall built on the living room side.

That is the wall we’ll be breaking down to make the new entrance. And you can just about see the existing door on the right of this photo. We’ll shut that down.

The Greige Kitchen:

Once the layout was final we had to decide our ‘look’. Since the counters and walls are already beige we thought we’d add the whites and greys in our finishes to get us our greige kitchen.

Source: Left | Right

The counters are beige, sort of like the photo on the left. We’re adding white cabinets to these, again similar to the left pic, with just a few cabinets in grey (like the right pic) to add that touch of grey. We didn’t go all grey because it’s a narrow kitchen and we didn’t want it getting dull.

We have the wall above the breakfast table to play with, since it’s a new wall and doesn’t have the beige tile on it. We’re thinking of using whites and greys on this wall and the breakfast table to add our greys.

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Maybe some sort of texture or wallpaper along with simple, Scandinavian style, black pendants will do the trick. We’re still to finalise that.

The work is underway though, and I’ll be back with the greige kitchen reveal soon.. so stay tuned!

Until next time,

Psst.. this kitchen is now complete. Click here to see how it turned out!