Simple Sewing

So a few months ago, I made my niece a baby sling for her doll. (A sling, very similar to one her mom has)
This was an extremely simple sewing project. I literally took a piece of fabric, folded it, and sewed the edges together to form a circular piece of fabric. The end result, was a really cute way for my niece to sling around her doll (I wouldn't trust my sewing to carry an actually baby in the sling, but a doll... absolutely!)

what a cutie!


- Leah

Gardening in April

Before this year, I always thought of the May long weekend as the start of gardening season. This year after reading that you can start to plant some things as soon as the dirt is workable, I did alittle gardening in March.

It turns out that it was a little early for peas and spinach - or was it the fact that I didn't water them?
Luckily, I didn't use all the seeds - so here goes round two of planting peas and spinach.

But my onions are sprouting! 3 or 4 inches out of the ground. I can't wait to eat them!

- Lauren

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

Kitchen Plans

I spend alot of time day-dreaming about our kitchen possibilities. I am trying hard to keep the focus on finishing other projects before starting any new ones, but we all know that one day there is gonna be something drastic done during nap time. Cabinet removal? Fridge moving? Who knows what its gonna be.

The first step was figuring out the new layout. Here is the current state:
(yes, done on graph paper, each square is one foot)

Some good things about the kitchen is the storage.

Some things that could be improved:
- counter prep space
- lightening
- space for a table without hitting the fridge
- room to open the door to the basement
- more open-ness to the rest of the house so that you aren't stuck in the kitchen when people are visiting.
- take advantage of the unused front entrance space behind the kitchen.

After many attempts, this is what we came up with.

Open up the wall behind the stove and take advantage of the unused front entrance. Although this means you are walking right into the kitchen, since we don't use this entrance we are treating it more of getting more window light. (this is not a load bearing wall)

Currently there is a small window opening in the wall to the living room, we plan to open this up quite a bit - this will be more work involved since it is a load bearing wall.

We plan to have no upper cabinets along the sink/dishwasher/stove wall. This should make it open, especially with all the windows (yes, there was a window in the front door closet - weird).

Basically we are switching the 'pantry' wall from the first sketch with the fridge&cupboard.
And then taking the stove section and swinging it 90 degrees to be inline with the sink.

This means that we are approx same cupboard space. More useable counters (no corners which are pretty much wasted - same as counter cupboards, currently ours is pretty sparse)

Since the front door is going to open into the kitchen, I think its good to have a coat closet there - as I said we don't plan to use the entrance or store coats there but for resale somewhere down the line, we will use this as a huge pantry.

People always say you need your fridge, sink and stove within such and such a distance, I don't think our plan quite meets those rules, but this is almost the same distance/layout of appliances as my parents, so I feel good about it.

So what do you think about the layout? anything I am overlooking/forgetting something?
All Opinions are wanted - this is a big project, I don't want to have overlooked something.

- Lauren