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New Year’s Goals and Another Kitchen Progress Update

Happy New Year! What did you do to ring in 2013?

Every year we have a New Year’s Day party. It’s our annual tradition. This year we almost didn’t have our party because our kitchen was in such a disheveled state. But, I remember someone wise asked if you wait until your house is perfect to invite people over or recognize that your true friends will come to see you and not your house. Of course in our case, I’m sure there was a few curious people as well.

But, honestly, this was one of the most memorable parties we’ve had! The guests drew on the floor:

The kids colored in coloring sheets to help us pick out color schemes for our kitchen. There were some really creative ideas.

I love this drawing from our friend’s 9 year old son! He has a future in design  for sure!

Finally, everyone placed their predictions on when the kitchen would be complete. The guest who guesses closest to the actual day will win a Lowe’s gift card from us.

Some of the dates picked are comical, like my little niece who guessed January 30th, 2013. Gulp. I’d better get busy!

For my 2013 Goals, I’ve decided that I need to have one goal, one mission, one task that cannot wait until 2014. That would be to complete our kitchen no matter what I have to do to make that happen (even if it means hiring out some help.)

Speaking of getting to work, I figured I should list out all the tasks that need to be completed in the kitchen.

It was one long list! So far it has 33 items on that list.

At the last minute I added #34 – “Consider hiring subcontractors.”

Kitchen Update: 

The kitchen progression leaves a lot for the imagination. Most of the work has been happening exactly there, in my imagination. But, those plans are starting to make sense in my mind’s eye and we’re almost ready to pull the trigger on ordering cabinets and countertops.

We’ve moved our table and tucked it into the bay window where I’m planning to build a window seat. This will maximize our walkway in the new layout. The table with its four legs won’t work as is because it is too hard to maneuver around the legs to the bench seat. But the table top is the perfect size and shape, so I’m planning on building a pedestal style base for the table.

The fridge is in its new location. However don’t tell him, but I’ve been shopping for a new fridge to take its old energy hogging place. This refrigerator has been in the house for two previous owners, that’s how old it is! Please ignore the half wall of boxes on the right of the fridge. They were just returned to us this week from the restoration company.

 

The pantry, where do I begin? I haven’t had the energy to put everything back in its place since being returned by the restoration company. Basically I’m going to gut the pantry and rebuild it with deeper lower shelves and some shorter upper shelves for cans and jars. Plus, I want to create a little moveable cart that can be a mobile island and small appliance garage. I’m thinking about having a place to park it in the pantry when not in use. I also mulled over the idea of putting sliding barn doors over the pantry, but just couldn’t find the optimal situation without building a wall to the left and paying crazy money on two sliding door tracks. For now, I think the bi-fold doors will go back, but will have a special decorative treatment. I’d love to hear any thoughts you have!

This corner will be the new location of our family command center! I bought a kitchen desk from the ReStore and plan on painting it the color of our cabinets. This will be a good opportunity to make sure I love the color. That little table is going to give up its top so I can refinish it and add it to the kitchen desk. Eventually I’ll have built in shelves on the wall and possibly a sconce for lighting.

I can’t tell you how less stressful it is for us to be able to live with the kitchen in this state. You may think I’m crazy, but we arranged everything into the new layout. It’s a great way to give the new kitchen footprint a trial run before ordering cabinets and making any permanent decisions. I actually feel lucky that we get this dress rehearsal.

I did make progress in the mudroom and laundry room over the break. We FINALLY got a tile floor in with a super special component underneath that is bound to make my toes happy in the coldest of winter days. I’ll be sharing more on that soon. But, here’s a sneak peek:

Those are porcelain tiles that are ink jet printed to look like slate. They were the most realistic looking tiles I have found. And they also happened to be the most affordable. I purchased the 12″ square Aspen Sunset tiles from Lowe’s. This is a link for Aspen Caramel, which is similar but has a warmer color palette. After researching using real slate, I decided that these will be more durable and have less upkeep than true slate.

Now that the mudroom and laundry room floor is done, we can upgrade our dishwashing facilities…

…from the cooler in the bathtub to the luxurious utility sink. My back is happy and we have a new DIY drying rack!

A small ladder outfitted with scrap boards works beautifully for stacking wet dishes and the dish drainer.

That pretty much wraps up all the plans and progress for now. I’ll keep you in the loop as best I can. In the meantime, do you follow me on Instagram? You can get up to the minute updates there ;-).

Happy New Year y’all! See you next week.

You can read more about our kitchen disaster and renovation in these updates:

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  1. […] Move Back in the Kitchen Temporarily and Throw a New Year’s Party […]

  2. […] Move Back in the Kitchen Temporarily and Throw a New Year’s Party […]

  3. […] As you can see, I have another thing on my to do list: […]

  4. […] it won’t work for everyone, but this family had a lot of fun hosting a New Year’s party in their torn-up kitchen. Guests wrote messages and […]

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