Kitchen Remodel - getting started

Our kitchen is original to the house. I wouldn’t call it terrible, It is just dysfunctional enough to make us (me especially) just a little crazy being locked in the house with it during the pandemic.

Some of the dysfunctional elements are:

1. The lighting is always at your back when working at the counter.

2. Shortage of counter space.

3. The cabinets doors are rather tiny. We cannot easily get larger pots and pans into them.

4. It hates us and it’s mean.

Periodically and unpredictably the kitchen will decide to cut power and laugh at us, I admit I shouldn’t take it personally, but I do. Chris says he doesn’t mind the electric charm of the kitchen but I don’t believe it.

An evening of Chris cooking sounds like this: Buzzzzz (lets say it’s an electric mixer), sudden silence, outburst of anger “<insert expletive>”, slam (going into the garage to flip the breaker), beep beep (as appliances come back on). 5 min later: buzz and maybe some music then sudden silence, outburst of anger “<insert an even worse expletive>”, louder slam, beep beep. Rinse and repeat.

We did hire an Electrician to take a look. (Maybe we should’ve hired an exorcist. Lol ) They said that we’re not in danger. But they asked if we planned to remodel and we replied with a firm “yes”. Then they asked if we could call them when the walls are open up. So here we are. It is time to fix this kitchen before we lose it.

The “business end” of our kitchen.

And this is the other end of our kitchen that leads out to a screened in porch. It’s awesome how there is a really big glass door that swings about 3 feet into the room rendering the tiny little dining nook area unusable. Ugh.

So let’s talk remodel. We have decided to hire a kitchen designer. We’re going to do the following:

IN THE BUSINESS END: Replace cabinets, lighting, window, appliances and floor.

IN THE OTHER END: Replace the door with a sliding glass door, turn closet into pantry and replace the door with something decorative, knock down the wall to the dining room, and install an island.

To get this done we’ve decided to hire a kitchen designer which I’ll talk more about later. Meanwhile we’ve started on our pantry closet.

When we moved in this was a coat closet. Immediately Chris went to Home Depot and quickly installed shelving for a pantry. Although it was a huge improvement over what was there, the shelves were still pretty narrow and the arrangement not ideal.

So we hired Twin City Closets. They came out and measured what we needed in the closet and worked with us to come up with a good design. We love it. Especially the deeper shelves and drawers that pull out. So convenient!

Next Chris is going to work on building some new doors for this pantry. The idea looks as follows:

I got the idea from a kitchen I saw in Pinterest then just mostly adjusted it for the width and height of the closet opening.

We are so excited to start this journey! Can’t wait for Chris to get started on the doors (I think he’s working on them now!). And we cannot wait to share more.

Now, I have to go make dinner. Pray for me. ☺️