Saturday, September 22, 2012

Home Tour: Kitchen

I love our kitchen.

L-O-V-E

It may not be of the top quality, model home variety, but it is SO nice and SO much bigger (4-5 times bigger!) than our last kitchen.

Our last kitchen was small but functional, but not really someplace I enjoyed being. Everything in it had been furnished with the apartment, meaning it had been owned and used by countless people before us, including silverware and plates, appliances and pots.

This kitchen, however, is very much my space. And I love it!

When coming in the front door, you see the living room to the right, and a hallway straight ahead that branches into a T, with the office to the right and the kitchen to the left.
 The view from the doorway into the kitchen. You can see why I love it:
1.) the natural light- makes my heart oh-so-happy
2.) the wide open countertop space! I love clear open counters with not too much clutter
3.) it's huge! Our last kitchen only had 8 small tiles worth of space on the floor

Our fridge was a long time coming. We spent a month with a dorm sized fridge that was as short as Grace is, trying to find a good deal on a used fridge. When nothing panned out, we went to an appliance outlet and get a steal on this massive fridge and freezer...new!

Here, you can see my message board that is magnetic and has a little line with clothespins on it. I can change out the paper and colors out whenever I feel like it! Also, my calendar that I tried to make reusable, but contact paper doesn't wipe off very easily, so it's really a one time use type of thing. Grace's farm animal toy is beneath that, but I'm about to switch it out for her alphabet one and then her magnetic nativity set at Christmas time.

View of the fridge straight on. Our water cooler isn't absolutely necessary here, as our doctor assured us the tap water is clean and parasite free, but I still feel funny about it, so we've kept the water cooler. Our trash can (and bag of trash next to it,) and our fire extinguishers cap off the row. Those extinguishers came in handy when we had an electrical fire the other week!

The door to the right is a door that leads out back. There really isn't anything there but a paved sidewalk that leads around to the front of the house and ours and our neighbor's gigantic water tanks. The neighbor kids like to run on the sidewalks that go all around these houses, and since our window isn't covered, at night they can see into our house. Sometimes it is disturbing thinking that these kids are looking in, but most of the time is hilarious when I stumble into the kitchen late at night and freak them out.

Nothing like seeing a giant, pregnant, white lady when you least expect it to make a group of 10 year old girls scream and run away.
On the side of the fridge we have some emergency contact information and my weekly menu note pad with a grocery notepad next to it.

On top of the fridge are two baskets. One is full of cereal boxes, because we stock up when we can find the stuff that isn't filled with chocolate. The other has our dish towels and pot holders in it.

To the right of the door is the counter space with our sink over looking the windows to the back. The drawers on the left hold our silverware, kitchen gadgets, and disposable items, such as baggies, foil, paper plates. Underneath of the sink, the cabinets have a lock on them because we store our cleaners there. To the right of the sink, a gigantic cabinet that stretches all the way back into the corner holds our three different mixing bowl sets, my cake decorating gear, and all of our rubbermade containers. On top of the counter in the corner is our napkin holder, knife block, and my wrought iron cookbook stand, which I LOVE.

The long wall has our stove and most of our storage space. Our stove is highly unusual on this side of the world, as most people use gas stoves. Our house didn't have a gas hook up, much to my relief, and it was just easier to find an electric stove instead. We bought this stove used from a nice Brazilian woman and it has been perfect. It is exactly like our stove we had before we moved over seas.

To the left of the stove is our utensil crock and to the right is my spice rack. Right now the spice rack is more for looks, as I haven't cleaned out the spices from before storage, meaning they are 4 years old!

The cabinets on the bottom, to the left of the stove, hold our pots and  pans and colanders/steamers. The drawers to the right hold our spices (top 2 drawers,) and baking supplies and utensils (bottom 2 drawers.) The cabinet to the right, on the bottom, has our baking pans on the top and corningware on the bottom.

The cabinets on the top hold our glasses and mugs, plate settings, and plasticware.

My absolute favorite cabinet, because I went so long with mismatching, used plates and bowls:


I love my Crate and Barrel Staccato plate settings. I felt like I was at my bridal shower all over again when I opened these up from our boxes!


View of the wall to your right when you walk in. This is where most of our food items are stored, since there is no pantry. The two corner cabinets hold our serving ware (upper) and small appliances (lower.) The top four cabinets have all of our dry goods and canned items while the bottom two cabinets, under the microwave, hold all of the big baking ingredients, mixes, and oils.

The awkward two cabinets that are underneath of that island (peninsula, really,) or bar, is where I keep some fun activities for Grace, such as sensory bins, craft supplies, and hands on activities that are only played with under supervision. This cabinet has a lock on it as well.

The final thing in the kitchen is our laundry room:

It was directly to your left when you came through the door, before you get to the fridge. We bought both of the washer and the dryer for less than 100 dollars, used. They are amazing.

Remember, in our last house we had a manual, single cycle washing machine that took an hour per load of constant attention. I had to drag it across the kitchen, fill it up from the sink, drag it back to the drain to drain it for both cycles, and transfer every thing into the spin cylinder to get the water out of it before moving it all to another room to hang dry. What a pain! Now, I just press a button and "Ta-daa!" it does it's job by itself.

The only weird thing is that the dryer is a condensing dryer, since there are no piping or tubing to let the hot, moist air to the outside. It condenses all of the water in a little tray in the top left and you just have to empty it in between loads. It's pretty easy and our stuff comes out soft, fluffy, and dry in about an hour. Amazing!

I've been eyeing some shelving to go above this area at Ikea, but we haven't gotten it yet. Our washing supplies, iron, and toilet paper/paper towels, are stored on top of the washing machine, while our medicine bin is on top of the dryer. It will be nice to get that stuff off of the top of the machines and have a hanging rod to put hanging clothes on.

That's our kitchen! We love the space and the light and I have loved getting to cook here! We spend much of our time in this room, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and Grace playing right along side of us. It's a great space!



5 comments:

Emily Powell said...

WOW! I love all the windows, light, and counter space!

Rachel and John said...

How nice! I love all the counter space!!

Kelley said...

what a great space! It is so bright and happy! Love it!

Lyndsey said...

I love all the natural light! You are such a trooper for dealing with the first kitchen you had for so long - I know I would have complained non stop! But now you have a beautiful, LARGE, kitchen!!

The Barker's said...

Nice!! I am envious bc yours is so much bigger than mine!!! I cannot wait for a big kitchen =)