I normally don’t have a hard time making design decisions and am pretty quick about it as well.  I don’t ponder and fret over it much.  And, remarkably, I am extremely happy with my choices about 99% of the time.  But with everything going on in the store (Christmas is so busy for us… food, glorious, food), visiting friends and family, planning February classes and now getting over the flu,  I am just catching my breath.   

I am thinking of copping out and painting everything a very neutral shade and then deciding later.  It makes for more work down the road but I think I need to see the floor first (we are toying with etched concrete!!!).    And since we are having a much more open floor plan I have to consider not only the kitchen but the formal dining room and the den. 

As you can see, I am not afraid of color.  We have a khaki and red game room, a two tone seafoam green formal dining room, denim blue master bedroom, dove grey and purple guest bath, goldenrod guest bedroom, teal and cappucino for the queen’s bedroom, peach and cream stripes in the foyer and a four color block pattern in the den.  Neutral is not a concept I am familiar with and I can’t abide plain Jane walls!!   

While I really have no idea which way to go, I am thinking a feather duster application might be pretty unique.  I was going to toss birdseed on the wall and glaze it but Todd booted me out of Home Depot when I suggested it.  Or I might do a combing technique in a burgundy and cream.  Can’t forget the whole reason for the remodel…. THEE STOVE…. and how the walls will look around it.  

These pictures weren’t taken in the best light but you get the idea I think. 

And then there are the floors.  We have decided to save Todd’s back and have someone do our floors.  We are seriously leaning toward keeping the concrete.  This is what it looks like.

We are going to be prettying it up to be sure but are contemplating grinding down the glue from the linoleum and doing an etched acid stain to create an old world feel something like these samples.   

Decisions! Decisions!  I’ll let you know what I decide soon as the new cabinets can’t go up until the walls are painted and the floors are finished.

The remodel is well on its way and it is amazing what Todd has done to minimize the pain associated with it.  He moved the gas line in one day so I wasn’t without a stove/oven.  He repositioned the built in microwave to the countertop so we could still use it.  The refrigerator was unplugged for about one hour.   Today, more than ever,  I totally and completely understand the triangle concept in kitchen design:  stove, sink and refrigerator creating a triangle to maximize efficiency.  Before the refrigerator was moved to the new space, my triangle was more like a drunken quadrilateral or some other odd geometric shape which always confused me in school.  (Why do they make us learn these things?  I still had to go online to look for an appropriate shape as I remember absolutely none of them!)  The sink and stove were in line with each other but the refrigerator and the pantry were spinning in another universe.  Yes, I realize I am mixing geometry with astronomy but that is how I felt during my entire time in geometry so it is appropriate here.  

While this doesn’t seem to be the end of the world, when you are trying to cook Thanksgiving dinner or make Christmas cookies or just a simple evening meal and you keep turning to your left to grab this or that and this or that is across the room, it makes for some Keystone Cops adventures in the kitchen.  We finally settled on Todd standing on one side of the counter going back and forth from the refrigerator and pantry to bring me the necessary items and handing them to me so I could add them to whatever was cooking on the stove.   

And something as simple as pouring a cup of coffee has been a treat as well.  The coffee pot has been moved to its new location but the cups are still in their original cabinet.    So you wake up and immediately head to the coffee pot and…it isn’t there.  You remember it was moved and head to it.  You reach up to the cabinet for a cup and… it isn’t there.  You head back to get a coffee cup and return to the pot, fill it with coffee and amble to the fridge for the french vanilla.  You then reach for a spoon and… it isn’t there.  The spoons are still by the cups but you forget to grab one when you were getting your coffee cup.  So you head to the spoons,  give your coffee a quick stir and discover it is cold!   LOL.  Doesn’t seem like that big of a deal and in the scheme of everything it isn’t but it certainly does remind us of what creatures of habit we are.  Especially when you live in a small kitchen.  Everything has a place and everything needs to remain in it… especially at 6 am.  In the photos below, the last cabinet is where the coffee cups are and the coffee pot used to sit below it.  Now, the coffee pot and refrigerator aren’t in view but are to the far left of the second photo.  You can see the conundrum here!   The photo on the left with the unfinished wall is where the pantry sat.  It has been moved to its new location in the photo on the right so we are left with nothing but my stained glass backsplash and some more errant wires to add to our collection. 

On the flip side, the refrigerator has never been as clean as it is today.  When we moved it, we vacuumed the beginnings of a second dog and cat from the fur which had collected under it.  While I do pull out shelves and drawers and wipe them down from time to time, emptying everything out allowed me to thoroughly rub down and eliminate every errant speck.   Which leads me to one of my favorite things: THE MAGIC ERASER.  I have no idea what in the heck makes this thing work but it is truly magic and no home should be without at least a dozen or so of them.  They are a white sponge with the bald one earringed Mr. Clean on the packaging.  This magic eraser gets rid of any dirt, grease or grime lodged into the embossing on the outside of the refrigerator.  It cleans the fingerprints on the handles.  It wipes off markers on a painted wall.  It is truly magic.  Buy a few today and tell em Dawn said hey!

UP NEXT:  The vent hood which has arrived and is sitting next to the stove awaiting its installation. 

What started out sooooo slowly finally had a woo hoo moment this past week.  We had to remove all of the ceramic tiles around the island in order to run the new plumbing lines for the sink and the new pot faucet as well as “freeing” up the cabinets so they could be moved to their new home.  Ugh.  Ceramic tile installed seven years ago:  Removed.  One layer of lineleum installed who knows how many years ago:  Removed.   Initial layer installed in the 1950’s:  Removed after a lot of this going on:  $*/%&*.   I wasn’t strong enough to scrape the tiles with a razor scraper and when I found one that wasn’t stuck like white on rice, I would go at it with the wrong angle and knock off a part of the razor blade.  Who knew when we started this project we would have to return to Home Depot on no less than six occasions to purchase 10 packs of refill blades!  But, with approximately 700 feet of tile removed from the 800 that needed to be removed, we were ready to make the shift.   Todd called in reinforcements and a hammer drill.   New plumbing lines were run under the slab and filled with concrete.  The garbage disposal, dishwasher and built in sink were disconnected from the corian countertop and it was placed in the den to be replaced by a leftover piece of dry erase board which acted as my surrogate countertop.   Thankfully I had installed a utility sink in the garage several years ago or we would have been trekking back and forth to the bathroom sink.   We suffered a week without water, a garbage disposal and a dishwasher in the kitchen until the woo hoo moment came when I arrived home one afternoon to hear the sweet, sweet sound of the dishwasher being run… a sound that might normally be a tad annoying because when it hits that rinse crescendo it does get a bit loud.  But this time, oh this time, it was music to my ears.  And while I am certain there are lots of folks without dishwashers, for someone who cooks as much as I do and who has always had the luxury of having a dishwasher being without one is a nuisance.  And while I age myself yet again, I remember being the one who always asked to push the portable one to the center of the room when I was a kid so my dishwasher and I are thick as thieves!     

What I’ve learned so far.  When doing the rough in for the pot faucet it really is best to test with an actual pot.  I was going to have more like a fountain effect as my pot faucet line was about 2 feet higher than my tallest pot.  We would have been sloshing and splashing water everywhere. Fortunately, we caught this BEFORE we installed the tile backsplash.   

Anyway, here are the latest and not so greatest photos.   Visquine everywhere and trying to keep doors and windows closed due to the dust storm that would make Oklahoma proud.   Do take notice of the bundled wires hanging from the ceiling.  One of the bundles is a light switch which controls the canned lights in the “old” kitchen.  The second is two wires which Todd twists together to turn the dining room chandelier which is now in the “new” kitchen on and off.  It is quite the set up. 

Next installment.  Moving the second bank of cabinets, the pantry and the refrigerator.  I can’t imagine why my in-laws didn’t want to have Thanksgiving in this lovely setting!!!!

The makeover begins.  We are going from ordinary to country french with the piece de resistance taking center stage.  I hope to share our triumphs as well as our mistakes and when it is all done, tell you what I would have done differently.   

As I tell my cooking class students, “fly by the seat of your pants and cook without the book”.   I am following my lead and doing just that. Fortunately for all involved, my significant other will rein me in just a bit. A contractor in his former life, he will be tackling the majority of the renovations on his own. He has already very patiently explained to me the cost of a change order… for those of you not familiar with contracting terms that is a change from the signed off plans… in other words, more money for the contractor.   My response was that if we don’t have plans, there can’t be any change orders!!!

I digress. Hopefully, my mistakes will be minimal but my anticipated state of country french reached.

So here we go…