The Reveal

Since last week, for all intents and purposes, our construction has been done,* and we have been moving back into the areas we've been without for the last 5 1/2 months. I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to wake up in the morning and not worry about when or if workers are going to show up. And even better than that is having a bowl of cereal for breakfast and finding all the parts, bowl, spoon, cereal, and milk, on the same floor and in the same room, to boot. What a pleasure. 

We are still trying to figure out the best use of the new cabinets. Some things seem to be working well, and others we're puzzling over. But we have all of the boxes of food and dishes out of the basement, and only a few boxes left that we are still deciding the fate of the contents.

So here is the big reveal. This is not HGTV, so the before and after pictures aren't the best, but I think you'll get the idea. BTW, this is the nicest kitchen I have ever had, and I feel very lucky to have it. 

Before: The wall with the stove leading into the office.

After: We closed the doorway into the office and gained more counter space. The stove is (mostly) in the same place. Now we have a hood that vents to the outside. That should help a lot on the days when we're cooking fish or cabbage.

Before: The wall with the fridge. On the other side of the microwave, just out of the picture, was a door. At the far end is another door.

After: The door opening at the far end of the above picture is what you see on the right hand of this picture. We expanded and shifted the other doorway. The narrow opening before was a choke point, so we hope the wider door helps traffic flow. The cabinets are arranged differently than before, so I'm unsure if we have a net gain or loss on this wall. However, we did lose counter space here. BTW, we will be getting wallpaper on the wall behind the coffee pot. 

While I'm not sure if we gained storage space on this wall, it's much more user-friendly to creaky knees with these pullout drawers.

At the end of the refrigerator wall cabinets, opening at 90 degrees to the others is this small cabinet. The idea was that it would be a drop spot for phones, wallets, mail, etc. Well, as it turned out, the shelves are only three inches deep, so not much will fit in there, including Ward's wallet. So it has become our spice rack. The shelves aren't big enough for any of the larger containers, but we have plenty of room to alphabetize the smaller jars.

Before: Sink Wall

After: Sink Wall The sink and dishwasher stayed in the same place because it was cheaper not to move the plumbing. The cabinets are a little different than before, with the main addition of a pullout recycling and trash drawer on the other side of the sink from the dishwasher. The bins for the trash and recycling always seemed to be in the way before.

Before; The peninsula extending from the sink wall.

After: The main thing we did here was remove the upper cabinets. While the storage was nice, they blocked seeing anyone sitting at the table. Since we don't have a separate dining room and use this space a lot, that was annoying.  

We made the base cabinets on the peninsula shallower so that we now have room for two bar stools on the backside of it. Ward is working on the stools and is finishing them similar to our table. 

Before: Our dining table and door to the pantry.

After: We refinished the table, but the chairs are the same. Currently, we don't have the leaf in the table. The table fits when it's in, but it makes the space a bit crowded.

We were able to expand the pantry out over the basement steps below to double its size. It's not huge, but there's room to store the small appliances there now, which is welcome since we lost counter space where some of them lived before.

There are more details, but that seems like enough for now. 

*Still to do:

1. Wallpaper behind the coffee bar.

2. Finish open wooden shelves near the sink.

3. Curtains

4. Artwork

5. Learn how new appliances work.

The first one will be done by the contractor, but the rest of the list is ours to do.