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Friday 13 April 2012

Kitchen Progress

So I've been thinking about kitchen layouts for about 6 months now and finally thinking I had figured out the best one.  I even marked the floor with masking tape to see where things would move and to be able to see the distance between moved items.  However, I am once again not 100% convinced that its the best for the space.......



In the mean time, I have started painting the walls, since we plan to open up the space to the living room, and since I never loved the orange colour I painted 5 years ago.  I used leftover living room paint to get me in the right direction.  I just did a quick coat for a general vibe.  I don't love the colour, I think its too plain.  It looks pretty good with the white trim, but not great with the wood cabinets or ugly backsplash - both which are going to eventually be replaced.  My next painting project is to paint the adjacent basement stairs area charcoal grey to see if I like the two colour combo.

Also in kitchen reno baby steps, we replaced the light.  The lighting in the kitchen was awful.  You couldn't tell if it was even on or off during the day.  At night it created all sorts of weird shadows and never fully lit the room.  We choose an inexpensive one from Home Depot.  Even if we don't keep it, I won't feel like we wasted any money (plus it could move rooms or we could sell it on kijiji).



Finally we replaced our leaky Kohler faucet.  We debated trying to fix it or get it replaced since apparently it has a lifetime warranty.  I knew I wanted a new faucet in our 'new' kitchen one day, so this seemed like a good time to upgrade. I wanted something with a higher faucet. And my husband wanted a pullout, instead of the side pullout.  We bought a Grohe which was almost 50% on sale (we still plan to fix the Kohler, it seems to have been leaky due to a lot of hard water buildup and it might get put into the laundry room but maybe its too nice to go there).

And finally, I have a new kitchen layout.  It's just a rough sketch but it has some improvements from the previous one.  It has more prep space.  It has a small moveable island/cart plus a table.  It would mean opening up the existing window into the living room instead of fully removing the load bearing wall (this seems cheaper.....).  I am not sure if the table would impede the traffic flow in and out of the doors too much or if it would be fine as long as the chairs were tucked into the table.



I know that I need to finish some other projects before diving into this one, but I think there might be some cabinet removal or bulk head investigation soon (I want to see if there is something in there or if it will be possible to remove them) - I just need to convince my husband to help!

- Lauren

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Check out the IKEA kitchen planner. I'm addicted to it.
Colin

Lauren said...

Thanks, I have heard about it but haven't actually tried it yet.