Sunday, September 23, 2012

Kitchen pics... old

Here are pictures of our kitchen right now. It looks good from afar but if you get up close you can see the many issues that we knew about when we bought the house and planned to have taken care of when we could. That time is now! We are ready to be done with the poorly constructed cabinets where sections are popping off from the wall or the base. We are ready to be done with the off-kilter drawers and cabinet doors that were "cut to fit" using poor measurements or workmanship. The magnetic hardware holding the cabinets shut are all in different places and they are sloppy plus some cabinets either don't close or you have to slam them shut. Lastly, the storage options are horrible. We have tons of space but with no shelves or extra things everything it just thrown in willy-nilly. Of course I don't like the Corian counters but that I could have dealt with if it were the only issues. We love our Viking stove and copper hood and are also keeping the Sub Zero refrigerator but getting rid of the wall oven. We are ditching the microwave with the broken numbers and buying a new stainless steel microwave and dishwasher too. We have ten foot ceilings and would like for the cabinets to go up higher. We don't want to have to move the moulding and it does have several layers of pretty moulding. This is a huge project but I know it will also make a huge difference!
Cabinet to far left is current pantry. We haven't missed a walk-in pantry at all BUT we don't like how it's right by the back door and, when open, the pantry gets in the way of people coming in and out. With so many kids over all the time this is an issue! I will want the new microwave either in the cabinet space to the left of the window or to the right of the window.

 Dishwasher will be in same place but replaced.

 We would not have spent this much on an appliance but since it came with the house we do enjoy our Sub Zero refrigerator.
This counter area is currently used as a desk/work station but I don't need that much space. I plan to move microwave to cabinet area by stainless oven/stove and get rid of black wall oven shown above. Then we will make this area mostly tall cabinets (less counter space) and it will be our new pantry. I envision wonderful pull out sections and all sorts of glorious add-ons to help make it a fantabulous pantry area full of snacks, cans, and boxes of yummy goodness. I would like the far left to still be a counter area with some work/storage space good for a busy mom like me.

Speaking of busy... this island is a work space for all. When it is not my cooking space it is an art studio. I would like to the island to be a little bigger and a lot more organized. The front of it now has a few rickety drawers and a large cavernous cabinet with no shelves at all. I want to to have more storage options, including maybe one of those narrow pull-outs that has shelves just the right size for cans. Daughter shown does not need to be remodeled; the current model is good enough.