New To Me Kitchen

This little story starts back in September 2010. I attended my cough-cough-unintelligible-mumbling-cough high school reunion. Back story: I used to run with three other girls in high school. These days, one cuts my hair, one is a realtor and has kids in the same daycare as me, and the third is a mortgage broker who had kids in my daycare. The mortgage broker also had a house for sale. In my hometown. A house that I had always dreamed of living in. Okay, actually, it's my third choice for living in but choice number 1 is a family home with the 4th and 5th generations currently living there and choice number 2, while it is for sale dirt cheap requires way too much work to be lived in. Which makes me sad. But choice number 3 is a lovely home. I know because after looking at it (and other houses) for almost a year, in April 2011 I made an offer on the house. On July 1st I signed the paperwork and July 2nd I moved in.

I love my house, not so excited about the My-Other-Personality-is-a-Grandma decor, but still love the house. One of my favorite rooms, obviously, is the kitchen. Not surprising that this is the first room to get a makeover. It was done in this horrendous blue and big flower wall border, and painted dark green and brown. So not my thing. I wish I had better before pictures, it really was atrocious. I stripped, primered and painted. Most of the stripping was done over the course of a week, most of the painting was done over the course of a 3-day weekend that coincided with my daughter's 4th birthday party. I did finally finish painting sometime in November. Okay, maybe it was the beginning of December, there by beating my previous "6 months to paint a kitchen" record by 4-1/2 months.

You may recognize the colors in the new kitchen, the light tan (called Dried Stem) and red (called Crimson Sky) are from the old kitchen. I added a third color, called Tahitian Treat, for a little oomph. It took me awhile to get used to it, but I really like the affect. I outfitted the kitchen with a used $50 stove and The Nightmare From Dugans Fridge. There are a few more things I'd like to do in the new kitchen, painting cabinets, new hardware and new flooring, and they'll come with time.

A few things I love about my kitchen, the stove is not by the fridge. Maybe that's weird, but I actually like having the two appliances separate from each other. I have a range hood above the stove. I have tons of cupboard space. The house came with a built-in dishwasher which quit working after about 4 uses. It's an ancient model and isn't worth fixing as I kept my portable model from the apartment. One of these days I will pull out the old dishwasher and convert the portable to a built-in. For now though, I replaced the kitchen faucet so that I can connect the working dishwasher. It's not convenient, but it works. The final thing that I love about my kitchen is the lighting. The lights are semi-enclosed over the counter top space. It wreaks a little havoc when taking night time food photos for the blog, but I absolutely adore the lighting when cooking. I will eventually figure out the lighting issue to get better pictures (or at least as better as I get) on the blog, I promise.

A few things I dislike about the kitchen... not much. I don't like that I really don't have shelving for cookbooks. Underneath my microwave I have six drawers, only two of which I actually use. I will eventually remove four of the drawers and put shelving in that area for my cookbooks. Yeah. That's about it. One thing and it's completely fixable. Two things if you count the dishwasher situation, but that's also completely fixable with a little muscle and know-how.

Memories are in the making in this kitchen. I know I'm going to be happy here for a long time.