The Whole Story… Transforming a kitchen and utility room with White Barn Home Interiors

If you stay tuned to our social media channel, you’ll have seen our collaboration with White Barn Home Interiors, a small family run online store based in Thormanby, North Yorkshire, that provides carefully curated home accessories. The owner Alex had been following our social media activity for a couple of years after discovering Granite and TREND Transformations in her local garden centre. When she moved house and discovered her worktops were not up to scratch, she contacted us to find out more about how we could help.

 We are thrilled to report that we recently completed the kitchen and utility worktop transformation and so we’re sharing our ‘chat’ with Alex about her entire GTT experience.

Tell us about the project from the start: Alex: I contacted my local showroom which is in Wakefield and run by Darrell Smith. I requested samples of the worktops that particularly caught my eye and wanted to take a closer look at. Getting the samples made it really easy to see which styles and colours worked with our existing cupboards and colour scheme. Darrell then came to my home to measure up and do the templating which was also the perfect time to answer a few questions I had, specifically around how things would work with the curved breakfast bar and how the worktops would meet with our fridge door. The fitters turned up on time on installation day and incredibly, managed to do the full install in my utility and kitchen in a single day. There was no mess at all and they took away any off cuts and rubbish left over so we didn’t have to worry about anything at all.

So, your story started with samples! Alex: The samples were really helpful; the only difficult thing was that I liked them all!

I was able to see them in the true light of the kitchen at different times of the day and to play around with our kitchen accessories and hardware to see which worked best.  The style I opted for evolved over a couple of weeks, I knew I loved Statuario from the The Trascenda® Collection  from the beginning – but when samples arrived, I was really taken with both Arabescato and Calacatta too.  Seeing the inspirational images from other installations on Instagram really helped me decide which way I wanted to go.  Warm white for my utility room was a firm favourite from the beginning and the showroom visit confirmed that. It was also so helpful to see the full sized slabs in the workshop.

Did you feel confident the spaces would end up as planned? Alex: I felt very confident, having seen the templating I could see exactly how the end result would look. The whole process was explained in detail by Darrell. I was constantly updated with the dates for installation and the fitter called me the day before to confirm what time he would be arriving.  He also explained who would be attending. I had two people at the house to do the entire installation.

Did anything surprise you? Alex: The only thing that was a surprise was just how much the worktops transformed the kitchen. We had the cupboard height splashback to match and when that went on the transformation was incredible, it really tied together the whole space. It has a wow factor when you walk into the room, and I love the fact that there is no grout to contend with. Our splashback sits behind our hob area and it’s the best solution we have ever had for keeping the space clean and beautiful.

Now you have used the worktops, are they easy to keep looking good?  Alex: The worktops are so easy to keep looking good. We have a coffee machine which can create some spills and they wipe away without a trace. Water marks are a thing of the past.

What was your favourite part of your makeover experience with GTT and Why? Alex: It was completely stress free, the fact that it took just one day to complete was excellent, particularly as I work from home and there was minimal disturbance and absolutely no mess left behind. The end result has to be my favourite part, our kitchen feels so luxurious now and the new worktops are so much easier to maintain than our old worktops. We absolutely love our kitchen and can’t wait to show it off to our friends and family.

Anything else you want to share? Alex: The new and improved kitchen has had a positive impact on our daily lives. We used to spend a long time trying to clean our old worktops and it was disheartening that it still didn’t look great due to marks, chips and dents. Now when we walk into the kitchen, it makes us smile and gives us such a sense of pride. It’s now the beautiful space that we hoped it would be.

Would you recommend us to other customers wanting to update their kitchens?  Alex: I would highly recommend Granite and TREND Transformations, not only was it quick, hassle and waste free, it’s a far more sustainable way to update your kitchen as well as providing long lasting, hard wearing, beautiful worktops.