A Kitchen-Demolition Kind of Day

Grab a cuppa your favorite beverage, cuz this is a long post!!

Mother Nature was very kind to us last Saturday and today — overcast skies and cool temps, which equated to (last Saturday and today) lots of improve-the-yard work and (today) a bit of kitchen demolition.

Prior owners of our house, a 1950’s home we bought in 2003, had the kitchen outfitted with LOTS of cabinets. Really, too many cabinets for the size of kitchen. Our kitchen, as you’ll see in the pics below, is galley-style, and cabinets were installed floor-to-ceiling on each side of the room. In addition, the cabinets on the sink side of the kitchen also had a piece towards the far end of the room that jutted out towards the center of the room (like the short leg of the letter “L”) — we took that cabinet out a couple years ago, which immediately opened up the room.

The way all of the cabinetry had been installed caused the kitchen to feel closed-in and dark, though in reality I know the folks who had the cabinets installed were just doing what they could do to eek out as much storage space as possible (we have a serious lack of closet space throughout the house). Still and all, “closed-in and dark” wasn’t working for me — I enjoy being in the kitchen, but I want my kitchen space to feel airy and light.

The window over the sink had been boarded over at some point in the past, which is actually okay with us since we are within spittin’ distance of the duplex next door and it’s not an especially attractive piece of property to be gazing upon — so, boarded up window, no problem. But it does cut out a great deal of natural light in the main part of the kitchen. Fortunately, there is another window at the far end of the kitchen, in the area where we have our washer and dryer, so we pick up a bit of natural light that way.

We’ve been tossing around all sorts of ideas these past couple of years of ways to open up and brighten up the kitchen, only recently finally coming up with a do-able plan that we both like. Today we crossed off one of the big to-do’s of that plan — remove the big pantry that was next to the stove.

Before:

After (blue walls have already been primered over, as you can see):

It felt so good to get that big ole box out of the kitchen!!! And it’s amazing how much just getting that one cabinet out of there brightened up the room.

Next up, we’ll remove the cabinet over the fridge.

Our goal is to have no upper cabinets on that side of the kitchen. We’ll likely keep the small lower cabinet between the fridge and oven because it’s a good place to store cookware and bakeware, and it provides a nice little work area. We’re thinking a not-too-deep (from front to back) work table of some sort would be nice on the other side of the oven, butted up against the wall — a four-legged table, maybe a bit lower than the kitchen countertops because I’m short and I’d like to have an area where I could comfortably knead dough or chop veggies.

This gives a good shot of the whole kitchen:

We still have several big DIY projects left for this room:

~ Repaint the upper and lower cabinets white. That should brighten up the room substantially. I’ve never liked the color of these cabinets — they give off such a yellow hue, which doesn’t work well if you don’t have much natural light in the room.

~ Remove the doors from the very upper cabinets. I feel like there is nothing in the style of these cabinets to catch your eye as you look around the room. They are plain and flat-fronted, with no architectural detail, and they are all floor-to-ceiling, with no variance in height. Removing the doors from the very upper cabinets should help break the monotony on that side of the room, plus, since those cabinets will be open, I’ll be able to put some things in them that will be nice to look at.

~ Attach hardware to the remaining cabinets and to the drawers.

~ Remove the shelf over the sink (there used to be two shelves, but we’ve already removed one), but still have some kind of lighting in that area. I’d eventually like to get a big stained glass (or faux stained glass) to hang in that area.

~ Hubby will have to texture the wall on the oven/fridge side of the room, and also the little area above the opening between the kitchen and dining room, then I’ll be able to primer those areas. Then we’ll be ready to paint the walls!!! Anyone who knows me will not believe I’m about to say this, but we’re actually leaning towards a shade of white for our walls (gasp! I know! That’s what I get for saying “white walls never again”!!). If anyone has a buttery shade of white they’d recommend for walls, we’re open for suggestions. I’ve never willingly chosen white before, and I’m quickly discovering there are a bazillion shades of white.

~ On the oven/fridge side of the room and the washer/dryer end of the room, we’d like to put up some pretty, yet functional, shelves in various places — not big, overwhelming shelves, but a variety of smaller ones. They can hold cooking utensils, salt & pepper, and that kind of thing, but they can also hold things I don’t have room for in the cabinets (china, big platters, deviled egg plates, etc.), as well as neat little things I find at the antique mall and thrift store. I have some neat artwork and crafted goodies that have been patiently waiting for us to display them in the kitchen.

~ New lighting. I have no idea what we will end up with re: lighting, but now that the pantry is gone we can install a ceiling fan with longer blades — woot!! A ceiling fan in the kitchen is worth its weight in gold come summertime.

Projects that are probably not DIY (but you never know!):

~ Countertops: Once we have white cabinets and white walls, we’ll be ready to bring in some color in the form of new countertops. We’ve done some looking around at countertops and actually don’t mind the laminates that are available, so we’ll proabably opt for a pretty laminate.

~ Flooring: Oh man, we cannot wait to get new flooring in this room!!! When we bought the house, the kitchen had an industrial-grade dark blue carpet — you know, to help with the “closed-in and dark” feeling that was already going on in there! We eventually pulled the carpet up, only to find the in-not-great-shape, dated vinyl flooring you can see in the pictures above. Since our house is on a pier and beam foundation, anything that would be negatively affected by shifting (ie, ceramic tile, wood floors, laminate faux-wood floors) is not a good choice for our house. We haven’t looked at flooring too much yet, simply because it will be the last part of our renovation — it’ll be easier to decide what we want on the floor once we have the cabinets and walls completed. Whatever we choose, it has to be durable, because we’re home a great deal of the time, not to mention we have two still very young and active dogs who have to go through the kitchen to get outside, and it has to be okay to get wet, because I’m sloppy when I wash dishes.

We’re hoping to get all of this stuff accomplished during 2009. We’re doing our best to get as much of the sweaty work done before the dog days of summer set in — because of that particular goal, I imagine we’ll try to tackle repainting the kitchen cabinets asap — ironically, that’s the project we’re dreading the most — but once we get it done, everything else should move along rather quickly (she says with utter confidence!).

Oh yeah, in that last picture above, see the red dining room through the walkway at the far end of the kitchen? The red will be going away this year too. I’m tired of the red dining room, and also of the yellow living room (on the other side of the dining room), so both rooms will be repainted, most likely while the kitchen redo is happening and most likely with the same wall color we choose for the kitchen. LOTS of primering and painting will be happening in the Wren & Stitchy household in the coming months . . . stay tuned!!