Kitchen details

 Recently I showed you an overview of our newly remodeled kitchen. Today, I'm going to add a few more details. Because it's all in the details, right?

In the two corner cabinets on the stove wall, we have shelves that pull all the way out. No more on our knees, peering into the abyss looking for something. 

We have pullout shelves on either side of the stove, next to the above cabinets. We are not sure how we want to use them yet, but we have oils, vinegars, and sauces on this side. On the other side, we have grilling utensils because they are too big to store with the other turners, etc.

Next to the sink, we have a pullout drawer for trash and recycling. This is something I requested, and so far, it's working great.

Under the coffee spot, we have this divided drawer. When I first saw it, I thought the spaces were too small to store many items. However, it's working much better than I thought, and it's nice to not have to sort through a disorganized drawer to find what you want as we did in the past. We have a crock next to the stove with things we frequently use for cooking.

We now have stools to use at the peninsula. We shopped a lot of places for stools to no avail for various reasons. However, we found these at an unfinished furniture store and finished them like the table. BTW, they swivel, which can be fun at times. :)

Not in the kitchen, but in our newly configured hallway is the table Ward built for that spot. It is made from ash. All of the wood for the table came from the same tree. 

Until next time...

Busy

I'm working on some extra projects right now, so my posting here may be sparse for a few weeks. Although, I'm not sure how you will tell the difference from my regular, irregular schedule. :)

Every couple of days, we are having
snow and ice to contend with. 

First, some of my computer writing time is being taken up each week with a gift I received for Christmas. My sister-in-law got me a subscription to StoryWorth, a service that sends you a question each week to answer, and after a year, your responses are published into a book. It's a means of saving family history and telling a personal story. The questions are open-ended and require effort. For example, the question I'm working on now is, "What were your grandparents like?" I'm finding it challenging to discuss four different grandparents (and a bonus one we discovered a few years ago) in only a few paragraphs. Actually, this answer is more than a few paragraphs, and I'm only discussed 2/5 so far. I have told some of my family stories here on my blog, but with Storyworth, I can add specific names, places, and times that I don't share here. We'll see how it goes. I may get tired of this before the year is done, but I would like to do this for my kids and others.

Also, we have a date for construction to begin on our kitchen. In just two weeks, we have to have several rooms emptied. The kitchen is the main focus, but the domino effect of closing doorways and opening others have spread the job. And then there are things like if the new floor is going to extend into the connecting laundry room and bathroom, do we want to take this opportunity to put in a new toilet and vanity to replace the worn 33-year-old ones? We need to shop for those things if we do. And we're trying to figure out how we will function the 2-3 months the project is supposed to last. We have a small canning kitchen in the basement, so we have options there. However, we are moving cabinets from upstairs to downstairs to replace the small, crude ones there now, so we have to have that area empty, too. However, that's the first thing they will do, so hopefully, we will have a usable space down there before too long. But even before a functioning "kitchen," we have to figure out our workspaces since the office is one of the areas we have to cleanout. Ward works from home every day, so he will need a good space to relocate into. There are options for everything; we just have to figure them out.

So I'll see you when I see you. Actually, that might be more often than I plan because I am talking with you now because it's easier than working on either of the projects I mentioned above. 

Tuesday 4 - Kitchens

 This week's Tuesday 4 is asking about kitchens. Join me if you like.

1.  They say the kitchen is the heart of the home...tell us about YOUR kitchen. What is your favorite part of your kitchen? 

Our kitchen is a fairly typical suburban kitchen. It has the original 30-year-old oak cabinets, Formica countertops, and vinyl floor. It also has the original built-in microwave from 1989. The microwave still works but is very weak, so we have a countertop model that we use. The rest of the appliances are about 15+ years old. We turned our dining room into an office, so this is also where we eat.

Our 31-year-old microwave.

I'm not in love with any of it, but I'd say my favorite part is the window over the sink. We have positioned bird feeders right outside of it, so there's usually a good show being put on by the birds. I am also happy with the dishwasher because it gets things much cleaner than our old one did. I don't know if it's the machine or the water difference, but it's a pleasure to unload clean dishes instead of ones that have to be rinsed or rewashed.

That doesn't present a very warm, cozy feeling that is often associated with kitchens, does it? We are not food-centric here either with cooking or eating so that might be part of the reason.

 2.  If money were no object, what would be your "dream kitchen"? That's a hard one because my mind needs parameters to imagine something and money is always an object. So I'm not sure what my dream kitchen is but I can tell you what we are going to do when we redo our kitchen in the near future. (BTW, the near future is a relative term because we started the process last January and are still waiting for construction to begin. Supply chain problems and a boom in construction have been the major reasons for this.)

Unlike what you see on HGTV, we are going to keep the same basic layout and we are not adding an island. However, we are closing off one door and widening another to help the general flow. We are also taking down the cabinets over the peninsula because they totally block the view of our table. Presently when working at the counter, it is difficult to talk to anyone sitting at the table is. I am also looking forward to full extension drawers because it's difficult to see what's in the back of any of the drawers we currently have. We're getting better lights and a more durable countertop. In case you haven't noticed, we are very much driven by function. Luckily we have someone who is helping make sure that it looks decent, too. :) 

I guess my dream kitchen would have a wall oven and microwave built-in, but in the space we have, that's not going to work.  

tvline.com

3.  Tell us about a favorite memory from your kitchen, or from a kitchen in your past, perhaps your mother's kitchen or your grandma's kitchen? So many memories of the kitchen I grew up with, but I'll share just one. We usually had supper around 5 pm when my father got home from work. Afterward, my parents would retire to the living room to watch the evening news while my sisters and I did the dishes. While we wouldn't have admitted it at the time, we enjoyed our time together. We spent much of the time singing songs occasionally with simple harmonies. I regularly sing many of these songs today. There was also a fair amount of bugging my oldest sister. I knew just what would drive her crazy like singing MaryAnn's version of "I Want To Be Loved by You" from Gilligan's Island. Also, one of my favorite ways to goof off, while supposedly was drying dishes, was to soak the labels off of cans, tear them into pieces and put them together like a jigsaw puzzle on the front of the cabinets. When they were wet, they stuck well. When you're young, you will do anything to avoid work not always thinking through that it's still going to be there after you're done playing. 

While good, these beans were
 not as good as Dee's.

4.  If you could invite anyone in the world (either past or present) to come to visit with you in your kitchen, who would it be, and why? Once again, this is a question that needs parameters. Of course, I would love to sit down again with long-gone relatives(my mother and grandmothers come first to mind) or many of the world's movers and shakers from the past. My brain is about to explode with the possibilities.

But being the ever practical one, I'd say that I'd like Dee to visit my kitchen. She worked for a while helping my mother after finishing her regular job as a cook. She is a wonderful cook especially with the country cooking that I grew up with. First up would be her ham salad for lunch and then chicken and dumplings for supper with beans simmering for tomorrow.  

That's it for today's Tuesday 4, so until next time...

Thursday

Yet another picture of our snowy backyard.

The first thing I do each morning  is to look out the window. I am usually rewarded with a show of either stars or a colorful sunrise. This morning, I got a surprise - fresh snow. We have snow and wintery mix in the forecast for several days but last night was only supposed to be flurries. I was immediately like a kid in school again hoping for a snow day. It doesn't take much snow to shut things down here, so my hopes were high. I quickly called the weatherline for work to see the status of things. What a disappointment. Everything for my county was Code Green--meaning all systems were a go on a regular schedule. But here's the problem. We have four inches and it's still snowing at my house, but in the part of the county where they make the decisions, they only had 1/2 inch. It has been a long time problem because the county has different weather zones. But it is what it is. I will have to get ready for work soon. 

Our kitchen still has the 600 watt,
1989 microwave. This will change.

Otherwise, I've been busy with things I don't think you'd be too interested in (colonoscopies, allergies, and various other assorted things that have me going from appointment to appointment.) What's more exciting is that we are going to redo the kitchen. We have talked about it since we moved in, but the kitchen remodel has finally made it to the top of the list. So far, the only formal thing we have done is to find a kitchen designer but my mind has been very busy with various details. I have been thinking about how we will rearrange things so that we can continue with our daily lives for the months the construction will be going on. I think it's doable, but will take some effort. And all of the decisions to be made about materials, appliances, layout, etc. Much of this seems overwhelming, so I did something I know how to do. I went through all of the kitchen cabinets and drawers and got rid of anything we weren't using. Now we can understand exactly what we need to store.

Well, times up here. Gotta go.

Until next time...