Here it is....the new, the fabulous, the clean and mouse-free for now kitchen!!! Yippee!! It is so great to have my kitchen back after all this time. I didn't realize how much I would miss being able to cook and bake. Kitchen chores are so endless that it is easy to think of them as a burden, but I have to admit now that they mostly make me happy. Our remodel was about as plain and simple as we could make it , allowing
for the need to rip the room down to the studs to repair plumbing and wiring and replace the walls and ceiling. The cabinets are off-the-shelf Home Depot specials and the counters are laminate. We thought we ought to choose from the pre-made laminate counters in the store, but I just couldn't stand the selection, so we picked the color we liked and had them made for us. It cost almost twice as much, but I am so glad we did. The other splurge was the sink and faucet. If fortune allows, this kitchen will eventually be a dye
room, so I wanted a really deep sink and a faucet that can accomodate big pots. The sink is 10.5" deep, and I love it. I also love my new stove, in spite of its small size and extreme simplicity. I only had a 20" stove before and debated seriously about buying a bigger one, but realized eventually that the small size actually works pretty well in the room. The old stove had such a faulty thermostat that it had to be replaced; the new oven heats very evenly at exactly the right temperature and never soars unexpectedly to 500 degrees or burns the back corners of my cakes. We did go to a lot of trouble to put in a range hood with ducting, the old one being unducted and entirely useless. Saint Mike fought with it for over a week, swearing copiously, but the new, much larger range hood actually works, and is even fairly quiet. Another blessing is the presence of the refrigerator in the kitchen, instead of across the hall.
We got so used to its old location that I still go there by default, but it is so nice not to have to make twenty trips out of the kitchen for each meal. The open shelving is working out well so far too. We chose to do shelving as a cheaper alternative to cheap cabinets, but we also thought it was more appropriate to the simple cabin kitchen we were making. There was something too tight and precious about rows of store-bought cabinets, especially when we realized they would be white. Shelves allow more color, texture and movement. Speaking of color, it was something I worried about from the start. I didn't want to introduce too much, because there is no other painted color in our wood panelled house. I chose a wall color that relates to the exterior house paint you can see through the windows. The counters and baskets were as neutral and natural as I could manage, and fortunately my dishes looked okay in combination with them. Of course, we aren't really finished. The window sill broke during the demolition process, and most of the ceiling trim is still missing. The wall that separates the kitchen from the front hall only has drywall on the kitchen side, so it needs to be completed too. We plan to tile the wall between the stove and the range hood, and have the plain white tile in a box waiting for Saint Mike to be energized. That reminds me to say how grateful I am to him for all of the work he has done. I am so lucky to be married to someone who can and will undertake all of the skilled labor needed for this kind of renovation. Thanks, Mike.
