How we turned our Built-in Kitchen desk to a Built-In Hutch

Built-in kitchen hutch before after kitchen remodel built in kitchen desk to hutch large glass doors kitchen how to style a kitchen hutch glass cabinets kinseywalsh kinsey walsh

Before we renovated this kitchen, I knew that I wouldn’t need the built-in desk sitting at the edge of the breakfast nook. I imaged it getting filled up with papers, computer cords, and junk mail. I couldn’t envision a time anyone would actually sit and work there. At first when I looked at this space, I wasn’t sure whether I should remove the cabinetry altogether and put a piece of furniture, put open shelving, or start over and make the counters the same height as the rest of the kitchen. Since the kitchen (and this space especially) is such a focal point in our home, I wanted to make this space something beautiful and functional.

After much research (ahem, Pinteresting!), I decided to keep the countertops the same height and create a custom hutch on top of it. I thought this would make it really seem like a standalone statement piece of the kitchen and not just an extension of the countertops. We were already updating the cabinetry, so it wouldn’t be that much more expensive to add on this new project. We had our carpenter create three large glass doors on top of the countertop and fill in the bottom desk space with drawers.

BEFORE

You can see the space before below. The desk sits at the edge of the kitchen right behind the breakfast nook. The faraway shot was taken after we painted but before we removed 5 feet of the wall between the living room and kitchen.

CONSTRUCTION

A few notes on the details/contstruction:

We color matched the paint of the kitchen to the trim in the rest of the house. Our walls are Wordly Gray by Sherwin Williams.
Since the glass doors were so large, we used tempered glass
Our carpenter mismeasured the space between the cabinets and there wasn’t enough space for our 2in mitered edge countertop, so we ended up just using the 3cm slab edge. At first I was pretty unhappy, but I actually like how there is a difference. It makes it feel like its own piece of furniture.
Make sure that your carpenter lines up the shelves with the door panes… our didn’t and we had to have them re-installed. We have an extra shelf currently at the top, but I’m too lazy to take it out right now 🤣
A few fun ideas for making this more unique:
- Make the cabinets stain grade and keep them wood toned
- Add wall paper or a different color paint to the back of the cabinets
- Add cabinet lighting or a spot light
- Use beveled glass

With upper cabinets and lower drawers removed

AFTER

And now the after! I styled the shelves using some organic elements like wood tones and greenery to help warm up the all white space. Additionally I used a mix of decorative and functional decor. The drawers at the bottom add a lot of extra storage space.

What do you think? Would you have left the desk or done something different?

Thanks for stopping by! xo, Kinsey

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