Kitchen Basics

In all it's glory, here's the left half (if you are facing the windows) of the kitchen. This was taken before we moved in. An attractive piece of work, no? We recently had the window in the almost-finished hub room replaced, so we replaced the two kitchen windows at the same time, since the kitchen is the next major project.

There wasn't really anything terribly wrong with the kitchen windows in terms of construction. Wood casing, the joints were still tight. Old fashioned storm windows that you clip on from the outside (unless you drop them from the top of a ladder first). But the glass is definitely not efficient. The kitchen overlooks the back yard and faces south. It also sits on top of the boiler room. It gets pretty toasty.

Just to whet your imagination a bit, by the time we're done, the plan is to put the gas range right in between the two windows, essentially under the wall shelves you can see in the pic above. We're having a stainless and copper hood fan cover built to go over the range. The wall where the stove is right now divides the dining room from the kitchen. We'll take it out and replace it with a peninsula, so that the kitchen is more open to the dining room.

Here's what it looked like a couple of weeks ago, with no window.

And from the outside. Sorry folks, this gorgeous light fixture and its twin on the other side of the kitchen area already spoken for.

Presto! New Window! The window in the hub room is the same style (and in the hub room, this is a bonus because the old window didn't open - we can now get a cross breeze, whew!).

And here's the new window on the right side of the kitchen. The corrugated plastic? No, that's not our roof, it's part of the sunroom roof.

There have been a couple of other developments in the kitchen, although they are temporary. We bought the  new dishwasher and rather than storing it in the garage or the dining room with the other new appliances, we actually installed it! Not in its permanent location, but at least we can use it. And since we had to empty out the right side of the kitchen for the window installers, we decided to move the new fridge in from the dining room. It's supposed to be a built in model, so we've used the hardware it came with to bolt it to the floor, and Norm built a header over it - this way it won't tip when you open the door. Again, not its permanent location, but now I have a fridge that doesn't freeze half of what I put in, nor does it make a sound like the purring of a cat. A very large and hungry cat. Pretty, huh?

If I was inside the new fridge - with the door open, of course - this is what I'd see. The new fridge will actually replace the cupboards and counter you see on the left side of this shot. The wall where the old fridge is will be coming down, or opened up, so we can see into the living room and the fireplace.

Here's a better shot of where the fridge will eventually go. We'll have a bank of cupboards and a pantry, with an opening for the microwave (which of course is in the dining room right now...) and another opening for the fridge. We still don't have any takers for the cabinets and we don't have anything we can repurpose them for...so if you know somebody who just hasn't left 80's kitchen design behind yet, send them my way.