Tuesday, June 28, 2022

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.


22 comments:

  1. Wow, I love it, and like the lighter colors.

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    1. It's definitely bright and cheery now with the lighter colors. I don't know if you noticed, but we are using cat food boxes in various places on the shelves. They are just the right size and sturdy. If I get really ambitious, I might cover them to look better. But for now, they are servicing us well as is.

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    1. And it should function better than before--when we get used to it. :)

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  3. Wow, that is really, really nice. Glad you all are over the hump and enjoying it. This is the effect my wife wants to make with all of our kitchen cabinets, that are all "dark" wood. We're going the "cheap" route with paint. I am, as always, the curmudgeon, who likes dark wood, dad gum it, with "why do we need to do this" declarations. It's happening so I am going to stand out of the way. I'm sure it will look great at the end, just like yours. I'm going to have to show her your photos as she will say something along the lines of, "Yes, that's what I want!"

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    1. I think the debate between dark wood and lighter paint goes on in many households. Our house was heavy on the dark wood trim and doors as well as the kitchen cabinets. We have compromised and kept some of the dark wood and painted some of it. I like the look of wood a lot, but the darkness can change the mood of a room. We have some wood accents in the kitchen with the table, bar stools and a couple of shelves, but it overwhelmingly white. Have fun painting your cabinets.

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    2. Mike .... my husband would have preferred to keep our old dark wood cabinets, too, but I can't tell you how happy my white kitchen makes me. I spend a lot of time cooking and having a space that makes me happy makes it less of a chore and more of a pleasure. You will be giving her such a wonderful gift with the updated kitchen!

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  4. Oh my goodness! It's gorgeous! I love white cabinets--to me, they feel both classic and fresh. You have a much larger kitchen than I do so you probably didn't "need" to go with a lighter color to open up a small space visually, but since white is a favorite of mine, I'm glad you did. I also like your drawer pulls, backsplash, and flooring. Is it a slate tile floor? I think I have those exact same pull-out drawers in my pantry and I love them. Your "new" table finishes off the look nicely. Thanks for taking us along for the ride!

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    1. The kitchen designer would like that you said that if feels both classic and fresh. She steered us away from some of trends we saw on HGTV because she said they would date the kitchen in just a few years. And we don't plan to redo this again anytime soon! The floor looks very much like slate, but it's less expensive ceramic tile. I think the design came together well. However, it was torture trying to make the choices and keep cost in mind. They all seemed harder than they should have been.

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  5. Looks very nice! I like the pull out drawers. We lived in a rental house one time that had a small kitchen but every cabinet was the pulled out drawers. There was so much space there that I actually unpacked everything I had for the kitchen and still had room left over in the kitchen.

    It seemed like your remodel was worth it though it took a bit of time to get it all done. That would have been so frustrating for me and is probably the reason why we don't do the updating we need to for some of our rooms here :)

    Enjoy your new kitchen!

    betty

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    1. We have a few other pull outs and custom shelves that are nice. Perhaps I'll show those another time. We have a bathroom that really needs redone, but it's not happening anytime soon. We're done with construction for a while!

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  6. Your kitchen is awesome! It looks so bright and open, and I love your backsplash.

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    1. I don't have great visualization skills, so I'm especially pleased how it turn out--especially the back splash. This tile was a last minute switch and I'm glad we did.

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  7. I love your newly remodeled kitchen! I especially like your pantry and the slide out shelves! Well worth the wait, I think! I hope you enjoy cooking in there. :)

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    1. We have some other pullout shelves that are making things easier to retrieve. I am very pleased with the pantry, however, it was amazing how fast it fill up.

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  8. I love it!!! I love the spices.

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    1. (This is Akasha)

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    2. When the spices are lined up like that, it's much easier to find the one you're looking for. They're not next to where we do the cooking, but the time we save not looking for the right space more than makes up for the extra steps.

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  9. What a beautiful kitchen. You must be thrilled to have it all completed and get your life back to normal. Popped in from a mutual friends blog. It's always fun to meet new bloggers.

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    1. Thrilled is a good word to describe the chance to get back to normal and explore how we will use our new space.

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  10. Your kitchen is so beautiful. I love the cabinet colors. I've always loved a white kitchen. Makes it look so bright and spacious. I love love your sink. I hate my sink. That will be my next big project is to get a new sink and flooring done. Hope you enjoy many wonderful feasts in new your new kitchen.

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    1. Thanks, Janet. A new sink would be pretty easy to get as far as redoing things. The floor is more involved, but if you're just doing the kitchen, it wouldn't be too bad.

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What do you think?