Update: I am sharing my ideas at Carrie’s awesome party!
Happy Friday! What a crazy week… When I last left you we were due to get around a foot of snow. We got maybe 7″, and it was wet, heavy, and already melting! It did grant us one snow day which we all enjoyed! Chris and I shoveled the driveway, while Jake and the kids played in the snow with a neighbor and the neighbor’s dog (he is a cute basset!) Once Chris and I finished, Emmy and I built the snowman we’ve been waiting to build all season! Finally we had enough snow, and it was the perfect snowman snow. Here’s Emmy posing with our creation…
We used peanuts for eyes, and a carrot for the nose so that when he melted, the squirrels could feast on his body parts.
I loved this storm! The temperature was perfect, right on the cusp of freezing, so it was not too cold playing in the snow! I actually dressed in too many layers and was sweating as I shoveled the driveway.
After coming in from the snow, we had a towel by the door to wipe up water. We left it there, and Charlie decided it looked cozy….
Look at his face. It’s just screaming, “What? You don’t want me to get up, do you? I’m so comfy.”
Anyhow, in other news there has been progress in our kitchen makeover! By progress, I mean we met with a contractor Monday and told him what we want to do. Now we wait for him to come back with numbers for us. And then step two might not come for a long time after. We’ll see. The nice thing is that our plan includes him getting us started and doing all the things we can’t do. And then once he is done, we can take our time completing it. I thought today I would show you where the kitchen is now and where I would like to take it…. BEWARE. You may want to wash your eyes out with acid after seeing these photos.
Let’s start with what you see when you walk in….
There is a lovely, yellow formica peninsula with bar stools left behind by the previous owners. The stools have chew marks all over them and not from our dogs. Gross. The cabinets are dated, brown, the trim needs painting, and the flooring is awful. Oh, and that corner shelf is what they used for a TV, which we will NOT have in the kitchen.
This is the wall that backs up to our dining room, which will be gone! It is a load bearing wall though and our ductowrk travels through the top of it, so it will need support beams as well as a decorative beam to mask the vents. My neighbor is going to build me a peninsula to fill this space, and of course we will get new stools. The refrigerator is the only appliance that hasn’t been replaced with stainless. It will be! This refrigerator is too small, and old, but no new models that we want will fit the current location. The refrigerator will be moving to the wall you saw in the above picture., centered, with industrial shelving on either side of it.
As you can see, I didn’t bother clearing away clutter or removing my dinner from the slow cooker for these pictures… it wasn’t going to help anyhow! The sink will be replaced with an undermount, and we are hoping our neighbor can create butcherblock countertops for us. We plan to do open shelving all along the top, and I will paint the bottom cabinets. These cabinets on this side on the bottom are hte only ones that will remain.
This image gives you a better look at the details on the cabinets.
And the gorgeous lighting…. will get replaced of course! We want to do pendants over the peninsula, and recessed lighting in the ceiling, and a lantern over the sink.
Here is a look at the sideview of where the wall will be no longer! See the light in the dining room- that is natural light! What a difference between that room and the kitchen, in the back of the house. I am hoping that knocking the wall down will bring in all that natural light!
So…. now, let’s check out some of the places I would like to take this kitchen! All of these images can be found on my Pinterest kitchen board. I have copied them all from Pinterest, so just click on the image to take you to the source. I did it this way because some of them I could not trace the original source through the pin. 🙁
Where the wall will eventually be gone, yet we need support and to mask our vents, I would love to do something rustic like this with rustic looking beams….
For the peninsula, I would also love something rustic, but I plan to paint the base, and have a butcherblock style top. I love the look of this one. I definitely want open shelving underneath it so more light passes through.
Of course the peninsula will need stools. I want something rather simple, and I definitely want backs as I think that is safer with kids. I love these (and they happen to be named the Cassie stool, so clearly they are meant for me! Though I am not sure how I feel about stools being named after me…. ha ha ha!).
For the shelving which will be on either side of our refrigerator (which will house our microwave and other small appliances) I want to build something like these….
So those are all the major structural changes, but of course finishes will change!
And I want to paint my existing lower cabinets, something like these…
As for the open shelving, I am not yet sure on that…. perhaps something like above, perhaps white to match the trim, or perhaps something like above. The jury’s still out on that!
There are still many other things to consider as well…. hardware, faucet, lighting…. I am leaning towards a brass/antique brass in the lighting and hardware department, but stainless for the faucet, much like the image above, actually.
For now I have been focusing on the major things though, as those are all finishing touches.
Really, I didn’t have much else to share today, and the kitchen is on my mind since we have actually met with a contractor now, so I thought I would subject you to the inner workings of my brain on kitchen.