Perfectly Disgraceful

Does this look like a kitchen?

It's gorgeous. And it's making me rethink some of my kitchen ideas. Decorno posted about this kitchen yesterday, but then I found more pics here. I had decided to use one of Ikea's pantry cabinet in the redone kitchen, next to the fridge. Like this:

We badly need a broom closet somewhere. Anywhere. I really like how the Ikea pantries have all the little places for everything, but it would probably be a lot more interesting to have a pantry cabinet made from reclaimed wardrobe doors.  Hmmm. One of our original ideas was to use new cabinets beneath the counter and reclaimed, interesting-looking cabinets above the counter. But then I started thinking new! shiny! cabinets are what I want. And now I am possibly returning to our original ideas. Remember how it took us nine years to buy a couch? Yeah.

Floor!

Look at this sexy floor:

I can't tell you how happy this floor makes me. Best anniversary present Rex could have given me.

Staining the floor

I did like the unstained pine planks (that's Rex, hard at work), but they would get filthy in the kitchen, and I think the dark stain will look lovely with white cabinets.

That's the first coat of polyurethane. The second coat is being rolled on right now, and it's not unlike a chemical attack. How many coats do you think we should do in the kitchen? More than three?

White paint

I'm in love with white paint right now. I wasn't until recently. I wanted color, even if it was a neutral color, on all the walls in the house. I now realize that the problem was dingy old no-longer white paint on most of our walls. Now I've got bee in my bonnet to paint everything a fresh white.

I love the plain walls and simple bedside tables in this picture. Our giant king-sized bed will probably never look that cute, but it is damn comfortable.

Appliance paint

I wish I had heard of this years ago. The only appliance in our kitchen that's working well right now is the dishwasher. The 20-year-old second-hand dishwasher. It's loud, but it works just fine. Its biggest drawback is that its beige. But maybe I'll take a cue from the $30 kitchen makeover and paint it an interesting color.

From Sunset.com.

The other appliances? The fridge started freezing one area and getting lots of condensation. I fear this is not an easy fix and means a new fridge is in our near future. So far I've experienced frozen eggs and icy milk. The stove works okay, but not great. I guess it doesn't have to be replaced, but I'd really like to. The washer leaks, the dryer doesn't stop drying of its own accord. The toaster oven (third in three years!) takes about ten minutes to make toast and you have to flip the bread halfway through. So yeah, the beige dishwasher is all we've got going for us. Beige.

Demolition

The much-hated tile counter is gone. No more grout!

 

Legs

Cabinets with legs? These are the same Ikea cabinets that I'm considering, though I probably won't get the square drawer pulls. How about those legs? I assumed we'd have the cabinets go all the way to the floor with a baseboard at the bottom. Although the baseboards we have now are dirty with black scuff marks and worse. Legs would remove the scuff mark issue. I like the idea of being able to relatively easily sweep or vacuum under the cabinets and oven. Picture from More Ways to Waste time

 

Or would we not ever sweep under there and it would be awful?

French doors

We have a big window in our kitchen, which used to be even bigger until some previous owner bricked up the bottom half. Your old school South Philly types are not fans of big windows. Or trees. Trees make dirt. I bet you didn't know that, did you?

 

So we want to have that big window turned into French doors. And the door, which doesn't open all the way thanks to a previous owner's not-so-clever placement of the stove, will be turned into a window.

 

I wish the back wall could look like this picture from At Home At Home.

 

Sink

Look at this sink! We have something very much like that, though not quite that large, living in our basement. Ours is all sink, no sideboards. I'm not sure where it came from, possibly it was always down there? Or maybe Rex collected it from the same place as the marble sink in our bathroom? The sink doesn't look like much now, covered in debris and filled with the sort of things one dumps in a damp basement. But apparently it's in very good condition and still has intact porcelain legs. It also solves my backsplash issues and some of my cleaning issues. No water collects and sits and breeds around fixtures that poke out of the wall. Yes, they'll still need to be cleaned, but it will be so much better than the current fixtures and tile. Have I mentioned how much I hate the tile?

 

 

 

Our sink even has intact fixtures, though I think I want something shiny and new. We were also discussing buying nice garbage cans to hold trash and recycling and keeping them under the sink, but look how cute these stools are. And I will need a stool to reach all the new high cabinets. From Desire to Inspire.

The all-consuming kitchen

This week I've thought of little besides kitchen design. I've spent hours doing layouts on the Ikea planning tool, which has really been beyond valuable. I've considered several different layouts, and thought I was set on a new layout, but now I think I'm back to reusing my current layout, with a few changes. I'm concerned, though, because the Ikea tool seems to fit more things into my kitchen than I thought possible, but I keep measuring and remeasuring (granted, with a 48" long yardstick, where are the three measuring tapes we own?) and it comes out right every time.

This Plexiglas (Perspex?) is an interesting backsplash option (from Apartment Therapy). Have I mentioned how utterly opposed I am to tile? This is due to my experience with disgusting grout on my current kitchen counter and previous experience with bathroom tile. However, I just noticed that the grout on the backsplash tile in the kitchen is just fine, even though it never gets scrubbed. I may have to rethink my total opposition to tile. I wonder if grossness would collect behind the plexi?