Before Tour — Kitchen

OK, so now that you’ve seen the splendor that is our bathroom, let’s move on to the kitchen.

(After we wash our hands. Because eeew.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… our kitchen!

Ta-da!!!

Tip: If you’re going to introduce something mediocre, try saying “Ta da!!!” first — it tricks people into thinking they’re impressed ;->

Above is the straight-ahead-view from the kitchen doorway. The room itself is long & narrow… not exactly a galley kitchen, but similarly shaped.

Here’s what you’d see if you stood in the doorway & looked to your right:

Recycle much? Yes. Yes we do.

And here’s what you’d see if you stood in the same spot & looked to your left:

Actually, I hope you’d see it much more clearly in person — if not, it might be time to make an appointment with your eye doctor. The blurriness & weird colors are because the lighting is awful. And my camera is only OK. (Ta da?) 

We’re adding a bunch of lamps as part of our makeover. Until then, I’ll do the best I can Sorry :-\

Anyway… above is the view you’d have if you were standing in front of the doorway to the basement. (On the opposite end of the kitchen. See the doorway on the left? That was where I was standing when I took the first couple of shots.)

And if you stood in the same spot & looked right:

And looking straight ahead from the basement-door spot, you’d see:

And that’s pretty much it.

Frankly, we don’t hate our kitchen per se… we just hate aspects of it.

Our main issues have been of the storage and function variety. The built-in cabinets are… well… how do I say this politely?… junk.

They’re crazy shallow. The shelves are oddly positioned. The hardware is unspeakably ugly (Actually, that’s not true. I will speak about the ugliness plenty in an separate post soon…) and the drawers are falling apart.

Literally.

If you pull on the handle, the faceplate just falls off. Plus, even if they stayed together they still wouldn’t move right, because the little wheels on the drawers don’t fit well into their guide rails… which are, themselves, dented. Wow.

Poor Dan spent two days positioning & repositioning child safety latches on those jacked-up drawers & they still won’t catch. Don’t mention it to him. Unless you’d like to see his head explode.

So… we don’t use our kitchen drawers. Instead, we keep all of our utensils in big plastic bins inside our upper cabinets. Which really cuts down on available storage space…

Hence, all the shelves:

We store everything on them.

Canned goods, appliances, cutting boards, pots and pans, dry goods, beverages, etc.

It may not be terribly attractive, but it provides us with places to, you know… put stuff. Which is nice.

And once we put our minds to it, we’ll be able to make them look a lot better by moving things around & upgrading our storage apparatuses (aparati?).

We also put in a free-standing dishwasher. You can’t tell from this pic, but it’s on wheels. When we need to use it, we just roll it over to the sink and hook it up. Awesome. Highly recommend. Because life is just too short, man.

So — we’ve managed to make our kitchen somewhat functional. Aesthetically, well… we’re gaining on it.

But really, I shouldn’t complain. I mean, how many people have a bejeweled garbage can? And I guess the force field of cleanliness around our kitchen sink is pretty cool. (Even though it doesn’t protect against cartoon characters.)

Still… we definitely have things we want to accomplish:

Punch List: Kitchen

1) Do something about look of cabinets

2) Make cabinets more functional & try to solve drawer dilemma

3) Do something cool with the wall behind the stove

4) Maybe put in a garbage disposal… still going back & forth on that.

5) Replace broken spray nozzle on sink

6) Update light fixture

Of course, there are some things we’re just going to have to live with. For example…

We don’t love the linoleum, but it isn’t horrid or anything. And putting in new, removable flooring (Yes, it exists!) would be a real pain, since we’d have to deconstruct the entire kitchen — ie: remove all the big, heavy kitchen appliances —  in order to do it right. Plus, the floor is pretty uneven, which could further complicate things. So, we’ll probably just leave the floor alone & design around it.

And yes, we’re quite aware that the cabinets would look SOOOOOO much better if they weren’t so dark. Unfortunately, there are feasibility issues with painting them (post on that soon), so we’ll have to find a way to work with them too. No worries. I’m sure we’ll come up with something.

So stay tuned! Since we’ve already — out of sheer necessity — done a lot in the kitchen, we’ll make sure to go back over everything we’ve done so far. And, of course, fill you in on all of our upcoming projects 🙂

COMING UP: THE BEFORE TOUR CONTINUES — LIVING ROOM, DEN & PLAYROOM!!

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