The Kitchen: An Overview
Ah, the kitchen. It’s the room where meals are made (or take-out is stored), where guests and family congregate, where food becomes an expression of love and creativity or an abomination to avoid. Whether you use yours often or not, there’s no denying that somewhere in your upbringing a kitchen was the setting of at least one memorable moment.
Today, I would like to show you my kitchen (if you’ve been reading this blog long enough, you’ve already seen a lot of it). It’s the center of my household, where I learned to cook (both good and bad meals), the space our guests linger in and the room that Joey and I have some of our best conversations in.
However, before I show you these photos, I’d like to say one thing. This is the kitchen of a girl who adores food. A girl who, if she could, would scamper across the planet eating everything sight, swooning over each new flavor she tried. This kitchen belongs to a girl who spends 40+ hours a week thinking about, reading about, writing about and talking about food. That being said, I also want to state that I am not a foodie, as this passion is only about 2-years old, which makes me a novice.
Here you can see my faithful appliances – the gas range, fridge, microwave and toaster.
Here’s another shot taken at night.
That little white box you see next to the toaster is either part of a dumb waiter or laundry shoot that runs from the basement to the second floor.
There are a total of five doors in our kitchen. Here’s four of them. The doorway without the door leads to the pantry.
Which we’ve already dramatically changed (I’ll get into that later). Currently, it’s where I store our dishes that aren’t packed away in the basement, wash our dishes and store our food. The only two cabinets in the entire kitchen are in this room.
And this is the ceiling and lighting system of our kitchen. Don’t worry, although it looks like the ceiling may cave in at any moment, we have yet to feel anything land on our heads or see any bits of plaster in our food.
What you can’t see in these pictures are the two kitchen windows, which look like this
Except now they’re covered in plastic to keep out the horrible draft. Below the window sits a very large radiator.
Between the 5 doors, 2 windows and 1 mammoth radiator, Joey and I are having a really hard time trying to figure out where we should put cabinets, a fridge, sink, range and dishwasher. We’ll get it though. We have lots and lots of ideas, mock ups and plans to share with you and have even enlisted the help of an actual designer.
On a totally different note, but one that will make sense when you read the next post, if someone were wanting to reconfigure and rebuild a few flights of stairs, would one call a carpenter or a builder?
Any more pictures of that huge table you have in your kitchen? 🙂
Have you thought about removing a window, or at least using a smaller one that would terminate above the countertops? I had to rip out window when I did my kitchen, and I am REALLY glad I did so.
To elaborate, there were two window right next to each other. Just like your setup (at least your pic looks like two windows). I removed one window, and that allowed us to add a bathroom. It looks like you may have to get rid of both windows, consider only having one, and make it end above the countertops.
I’m also crushing on your antiqued ceilings. 🙂
It’s coming along:-)
Do you need all the doors? I had one closed up in my old kitchen with minimal fuss by a handyman.
Shane and Casey – tomorrows post has a few more shots of the awesome table we have in the kitchen. Believe it or not, my in-laws found it in a junk yard and brought it home to use as a work bench in their garage. It’s the only part of the kitchen that we’ll be keeping. 😉
Corey – let me first say, I adore your kitchen and its streamlined good looks. And we are actually playing around with reconfiguring the windows. We’re planning on moving them down to a portion of the room that’s unusable space anyways and then covering over their old home with cabinets. And you’re welcome to have our ceiling. I’ll ship it to you in the form of a million little pieces of plaster.
Susie – someday, it truly will be coming along. Hopefully sooner rather than later!
Karen Anne – You have touched on our other idea for gaining storage space. We have a carpenter coming out this week to tell us if we can reconfigure the steps behind the doors so they enter into the pantry, not the kitchen, and then we’ll close up the wall. I’m actually posting about this on Friday.
Thanks for the suggestions, guys!
I know I ALWAYS bake cookies while I paint! 🙂
Thanks for the tour. Can really see what’s in your future.