ON{the laundry}LINE: Kitchen Progressional

Our kitchen has come a long way since we first moved in! First, here’s the pictures I have from a photo tour of when we first moved into the house. This is before we had changed anything in the kitchen – the wall was still there, the portable dishwasher got shoved around, etc. Having a round table did not help the situation, nor did the highchair taking up nearly as much space as the dishwasher. lol. Its a bit of a mess yet because this was literally when we had done most of the unpacking but had still just been moving in, but we posted a house tour on facebook for our curious friends&family.

Take special note in the below picture of the “dusty rose” blinds you can barely see poking out of the top of the picture, and the strange backplash. Also, can you believe it took me until yesterday to finally remove that crooked sticker on the window? Aw, on the microwave in the below picture you can sortof see a fishbowl with Beta (our cleverly named Beta fish) in it! He was Nicole’s. One day I dropped a mug and it hit his bowl and he was sortof ‘wrong’ after that (trying to be politically correct here) and swam crooky and flaily. I was happy when he finally died because I think I gave him brain damage by accident but couldn’t bring my self to ‘put down’ a fish. Awkward. Originally this was a small eat-in kitchen with barely enough room to really be an eat-in kitchen. However, there was really no place that could have been a dining room.

In December 2008, before a family gathering (Christmas/Opa J’s birthday), Chris knocked out the wall between the kitchen and the livingroom. Before this, not only was the kitchen cramped, it was also overheated and the only soundproofed room in the house. Cooking was like solitary confinement.

Nicole inserting herself into the photo tour… aw she was a cute chubbers little 9-month-old at the time. :)

The wall being demolished. Clearly in-progress as you can even see the dust flying. lol. Man, its so encouraging to see how far our house has come… I think it was around the same time that he cut out the bottom half of the pantry, too, so we could shove the dishwasher under there when not in use. We don’t have enough cupboard space to give up a cupboard for a non-portable dishwasher. Although in hindsight we could have added more shelves to the pantry to make up for it had we gotten a regular dishwasher, but we just didn’t have the resources at the time.

For posterity’s sake, here’s Nicole in December 08. To keep the kitchen/child progression consistant. ;) Actually, that was also my first refashion sewing project! awww… memories. Here’s two in one shot, Nicole in July as we test out the bubble machine for her birthday party. We got a microwave hutch from my parents when they reno’d their kitchen and got a built-in. That freed up a lot of space on the counter. If you look, you can see that the dishwasher must be in use, it’s empty under the pantry.

When I was gone to my parents at the end of last month, Chris ripped the ugly fakey-fake laminate ‘tile’ backsplash (from back when they invented laminate backsplashes and didn’t think yet “hey, lets make them realistic!”) … and then the wallpaper behind that, haha… and then primed it. Then we painted the whole livingroom/kitchen/hallway one color. I’ll do a livingroom progressional soon, I promise. Okay, so… big reveal! Kitchen!

It still needs some sort of window treatment, and a few other things, but I’d say we’re really getting somewhere! It’s nearly as good as it’s going to get without actually doing a straight-up kitchen reno. Or maybe me painting those cabinets white, which my hubby DOES NOT think will look good, but he can’t kill me because I’m carrying his child, and he’ll probably get over it by November. What say you?

Please ignore the white “letter” magnets all over the floor in this next picture, and the cluttered bookshelf which hasn’t yet been ‘refinished’ after shiffling everything around to repaint. Even though I can’t. Ignore them, that is. I think the Ikea kitchen table & chairs, a gift from my MIL, really makes a big difference, too. So will painting that reddish pantry door white! (now THAT i have been given approval to do, as well as painting the wierd trim around the cupboards that has been splattered with ceiling paint because we were going to paint it anyways)

So, that’s part one of my Before & After! I’m not sure if there will be one or two more parts, because Chris ripped out the last of the random doorways in the back hallway (between a tiny back entrance ‘hallway’ that can barely be called that, the livingroom, and the kitchen, there were three little doorways. Total waste of a good chunk of space.) Anyways, that’s being puttied and sanded and repainted yet, so I might just do that in with the livingroom and a 360 of the whole ‘after’, instead of doing the livingroom right away.

You didn’t think you’d get away without seeing a recent picture of Nicole, did you? I do feel bad, she’s not in the kitchen. But aside from her horrible manners, is it just me, or is that a CHILD?! I’m pretty sure I own a preschooler. That’s even pushing it, she’s just two and a half. Although maybe pushing on the far side of the half, I guess she’s three in July.