As you can see, the kitchen is beautiful. It has great brown tile which hides an abundance of dirt and kitchen debris, lovely stainless steel appliances, and beautiful cabinets. As far as functionality goes, it's great there too--it has a gas oven and range, which I LOVE, and big fridge, and even a teeny-tiny bathroom tucked in one corner (it's on the right-hand side of the last picture, next to the door out to the backyard). It was a little lacking in space, though, so we had to get creative to figure that out. As you can see, one of the cabinets is missing a door. It was one of those in-cabinet trash cans, which I abhor. They are disgusting. The grime on that thing was super thick, so thick that the drawer wouldn't open smoothly at all. So we pulled it out, cleaned up the cabinet door, and are still working on installing the hardware to put it back on. Doing that gained me an extra bottom cabinet, which helped, but we still needed more.
We decided to use on of my antique dresses as a DIY island in the middle of the kitchen. We bought $10 Ikea butcher-block cutting boards and put them up-side-down on the top of the dresser (with a layer of carpet non-skid stuff underneath) to add more counter space. I use the drawers for storage of spices and kitchen linens. But the back is the best part:
A couple of evenings with some chalkboard paint, and I've got a kitchen kid-distraction that they all love! The back of the dresser was painted a hideous pink, so it was not hard at all to start swiping away with primer and paint. And the kids LOVE it. And I'm super excited that I had the gray matter to come up with the idea :)
Here's the view looking down from the pass-through that leads to the living room. The step-stool is the same one that's up in the blue room (I have two), and it's the perfect size for kids to pull over and help with dinner prep.
The door in the back leads out to the backyard, and the pass-through to the dining room has been wonderful. I'm still working out the bugs of learning new appliances, but we're getting there. Today I was cooking grape jelly (from real grapes!) on the stove and home-made refried beans in the crockpot--both ideas from Delene :) I'm looking forward to making applesauce here in a month, hopefully finding some peaches for peach butter, and super-excited about Thanksgiving! We're hoping to rustle up some stray college students to fill our table up, and I'm guessing we won't have any trouble!
3 comments:
Wow. I love your kitchen, too. The chalkboard paint is brilliant. How do you have the time to come up with and execute such great ideas with five kiddos running around?! Dinner prep hour is the worst time in my day because the kids are hanging around, bored, but not old enough to help cut up raw chicken. No room to do this in my current tiny kitchen, but I'm going to file this away for the future. I am so impressed!!
I feel old because your kitchen made me so excited!! It looks like a glorious place to cook and bake--open and full of light, and central to the rest of the house. The DIY island is perfect, not only in its function and the character it brings to the room, but also the hidden activity on the back of it for the kids! Love, love!
That has GOT to be saltillo tile on your floor! Is it terra cotta? It's what we put down in the basement!
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