Tag Archives: Kitchen

Transitioning again

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We moved the big TV down to the “family room” again finally. It’s more finished than before, but still needs some work but is live-able now.

It’s been a fight to figure out what to do with this house. Really the main floor is so small & it’s use-ability is pretty much decided from there. For a small family it might work, but not for a medium size one like ours. 4 children & 2 adults in a less than 10×10 area for all meals? No way. So the “living” part of the main floor as it’s “supposed to be” has been less than work-able for us as the years have gone on.

We moved here in November of 1997 with one child, 1 1/2 years old. By one year time in the house we had two children. By two years after that we had three children. We had different furniture then, and got different things here and there, but all in all it was that every couch or couch-like thing we got just felt too big, but wasn’t big enough for us.

We ended up getting a 2×2 corner couch from Ikea finally. It was pretty much large enough for us, but even it’s smaller feeling type of big couch furniture didn’t feel right in that space. We had that couch in that room and moved it to the “basement” and back up and down I don’t know how many times really. But all in all it was nice for awhile, but it got raggedgy eventually and we never got another slipcover set for it, and the arms broke down and one seat fell through nearly, so I took one of the sections and threw it out so now we have a very long couch with one flattened arm and the other side isn’t an arm, but the old corner’s back. We’ve lived with it in this “living” space for a few months & it always felt just too much. Everything has been just too much since baby #4 has come to be, & is getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger … while everyone else is getting bigger too.

So now that monstrosity is in a better ready for us basement family room, ugly as it is, it’s OK for now. There is another thing, an Ikea chair to move down there, and an end table, then the “living” area will be re-organized as more of our “dining room” –which I did do some time in the past once, the area is a glorified entry/sitting room, not suitable as a true living room or family space for TV, games, etc.

Our kitchen is STILL in transition, and eventually MAYBE we’ll have a small eating area on the side of the kitchen opposite where the old eating area was. We had a small 4-person seating table when we moved in here and it fit fine there, adding a larger table was uncomfortable and it’s only ever felt right since that purchase to have it in front of the fireplace. The entry for our house leads right into that space directly. There is no wonderful entry hall of any sort. So having a larger family is just too much for this house. I’ve known it for years, hubby has known it too, but I feel it more, no doubt, since I’m here a ton more than he is.

We need to build shelves and such next to the fireplace. We have a wonderful space on both sides to use to make a very classic built-in flanking thing and I’ve had many stylistic ideas and my non-natural-handyman husband struggles to see how easy it is to build nearly anything we want with just some good old fashioned work with the tools we already have and the wood & MDF and such we can get at Home Depot just a few miles away.

One of these days we’ll have the money for me to say, “this is what we’ll do this weekend,” and just do it.

Kitchen update August 2009

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My kitchen is awaiting a new temporary counter on one side, hubby promises it’ll be such for about 4-weeks at the most. I should have had it already for nearly a week, but here it is, not in yet. Hubby is sleeping on the couch, and I can’t do anything about it myself.

We are using MDF and painting it. That makes it latex vinyl coated and clean-up-able for the short term.

When all is said and done I need a new counter and new sink & faucet. Also a new dishwasher, but that part of it is the wrinkle in the plan. A cheap dishwasher isn’t what I’m looking for, with a decent higher end fridge and stove …

Biggest thing is we need: new flooring, and I want the floor put in and the cabinets put on ltop of the new floor, so none of the counters/ower cabinets are permanently installed right now, they sit without moving just fine, just need finalized and firmed up to the wall and anchored, and the counters then will be built up to the right height and it’ll be nicer. Maybe.

New Major Kitchen Appliances

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We got a new stove and refrigerator about a week ago, well, over a week ago, not this past Friday, the previous Friday.

We had icky ones that we got with our house when it was new at the end of 1997. GE bottom line sort of stove, and a decent Kitchen Aide refrigerator, which didn’t really stay too nice over the years, and was just TOO SMALL for a family that grew and grew, and lives further out from stores that we shop than is useful for such a way as we live with a small refrigerator. It wasn’t really “small” mind you, just a normal refrigerator.

A few years ago, at some point, we got a secondary refrigerator, it was a used one that a family was getting rid of because of renovation, it still worked alright, looked older than our Kitchen Aide, or as old, but offered us a bit more room, and so we put the KA one in the garage and put the Kenmore in the kitchen. We had two refrigerators and that was better. But the Kenmore started falling apart here and there, and the KA seals went bad, so with recent $income$ we upgraded, as we are upgrading the whole kitchen piecemeal.

The stove situation is that the old one was horrible. It wasn’t level, and DH just couldn’t get it level, trying multiple times. The oven was overhot and we couldn’t really nicely bake anything, we just lived with it. It was a coil sort of cooktop, and the oven was large enough to roast a turkey, and then the bottom was a storage drawer, which was never a good place to store pans of any kind, you had to clean them to use them, icky!

Anyhow it was just a blah, nothing stove, and I used it for over 10 years. Finally, we upgraded.

Electrolux recently started marketing super duper kitchen products in the USA and we fell into love with them when we stumbled over a display at a Lowe’s store in May 2008.

The products are pricier than other brands, but what they offer is so worth it, they look nice, work even better, and offer such room for storage in frige on the shelves, and have great lighting and digital temperature controls … and the stove is huge inside, and I have a smaller oven beneath, and there is such versatile-ness in the system. The cooktop is ceramic glass … what an UPGRADE!

The oven has multiple choices in how to cook something, and contains convection features.

I made a lovely loaf of bread yesterday. I used the Proof function to rise the dough, then punched it (the dough) down and formed a loaf, put that in a bread pan, and put it back into the oven for an hour (with a damp towel over the top of the bread dough) with the oven now off. The bread rose super in that hour (I took it out near the end of that hour and slashed the top then put an egg wash on top) then I turned on the convection oven and let it bake. It baked well, even browning, no split, blow-out points to the loaf.

The thing about that is, the oven can be a proofing environment which makes the bread so ready to rise and bake nicely, and then the convection evenly bakes … ah, it’s lovely.

I’m using the Perfect Turkey function today to roast a 4-5 lb. chicken. A Probe function is part of that, and when the probe is used, when the temperature of the poultry is reached, the oven turns “off”, and goes to a “Warm” setting. The roasting is convection roasting, of course. (It worked wonderfully, the chicken is golden where it should be, and to the right cooking temperature, I checked it with a separate meat thermometer, an instant type. Also the juices run clear, the chicken is appearing done just right inside and out.) We will have it for dinner later, with chicken gravy, rice, and peas. I’ll just serve it “warm” or room temp, refrigerating it until just a bit before dinner.

When our stove was delievered I looked through the documention, and couldn’t find the Probe device. We called Best Buy (where we purchased the products) and they weren’t sure that one was supposed to come with it, but of course, we said, we buy a TOP OF THE LINE product and it doesn’t come with a PROBE to use that is detailed in our manual as important to use only the one supplied by the company … yeah, right.

So they called Electrolux and then called back for our shipping information to give to Electrolux. A week later, it arrived, and now I’m finally able to use it. (Yes, it should have been delivered with the stove.)

Our Stove: (Stainless Steel)

30″ Electric Freestanding Range
with Wave-Touch™ Controls
EW30EF65GS

Bought at Best Buy for less than MSRP … (www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1196469743710&type=product)

Manufacturer’s Web Page: www.electroluxappliances.com/node31.aspx?categoryid=1006&productid=18087

Our Refrigerator: (Stainless Steel)

Standard-Depth Side-By-Side
Refrigerator with Wave-Touch™
Controls
EW26SS65GS

Bought at Best Buy for less than MSRP … (www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8809355&type=product&id=1206142367143)

Manufacturer’s Web Page: www.electroluxappliances.com/node31.aspx?categoryid=1013&productid=18124

Cooped up and Projects

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Things are greening up massively outside, Spring is here. I feel so cooped up though, with little access to the back yard, only through the dark hole like downstairs, which I despise to go through. It was supposed to be our “family room” but has just become a place where I don’t go, it’s dirty and junkier than I can stand. The children go down there and watch TV and spend time there, and just make the couch all dirty and make a general mess. We have things boxed up there too, with no storage in the house to speak of, so it’s a cramped space at best, and there is little light, so it’s a dark hole to me. It’s a concrete floor as well, so I do not care to try to make it seem nice, it just wouldn’t be for me and the baby, no matter what, for now.

One of these days we’ll get a new deck built and the sliding doors in the kitchen, then I will have back yard access again. :) And sometime later hopefully we’ll have a patio by the deck, which the downstairs “hole” will open up out onto, and a new door there as well, to let in more light.

We have indoor projects to get done too though, getting a new floor laid for the main level and completing the floors upstairs (which are partially put in) and then all those floors will need sanded and finished (a true tung oil finish.)

Then getting the kitchen cabinets “installed” and countertops ordered and installed, and more …

There is so much inside that needs done, and outside, including the house needs painted in and out. All these things are big deals, take $$$$ and hard work together, which are not anything I can affect myself, so I feel cooped up. Living with the not yet.

Speaking of that, we are super watchful of the baby since he can crawl and cruise, he’ll be walking anytime now. We have to retrofit the stair areas so that we can install gates. It’s been so long since we had babies to baby proof for, and “back in the day” it was a nightmare getting the stairs “gated” and it just won’t work out this time to try without re-building parts of things.

Baby has to spend more time in his play yard now, which he just ain’t happy about. That’s the price he has to pay though, so he doesn’t tumble down any stairs. It really feels more like MY price to pay, since I have to listen to the wails of “let me out” for 70% of his play yard stays. He’s content to play on the safe floor for awhile, then remembers the stairs to up … and off he powercrawls and starts to climb, and after him I have to go to get him off the stairs. Then it’s play yard time, or sometimes baby swing time, or crib time.

Play yard time is wailing time, but crib time is wailing an screaming time, and oh boy that just never changes. He wants to be with me, free to hold onto me if he wants, not separated at all. He’s so active though, as well, and that makes holding him impossible, even when he seems to want to be held, so it all goes in cycles, hold, put down, play nice, then crawl to stairs, into my arms, too squirmy, into play yard, or swing or crib, cry, cry, cry, or add in screaming, stay there awhile, come out and start it all over again. Getting the stair areas gate-able will really help me out. So that, I think is the one thing we must tackle. It really should cost $ or at the most $$. It’s necessary, but we can’t do it until we have the money to do that, and we are going out of town when we next get paid, and so it’ll be us living with this for another week, then leaving for a few days, then coming back to this and hopefully having the money and energy to tackle the project.

Just that alone will be a reassuring thing, safety is important.

My Kitchen – March 2008

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We have been getting our kitchen changed slowly, the past few or more years, with only better changes of late. We now have new cabinets, not actually “installed” but in use.

Our old ones are all either moved or thrown away, hurray!

The base cabinets are in use where they will be installed permanently and the wall cabinets are here and there on the floor or on the top of the MDF we have for very temporary counters. The sink and stove have been relocated to their new permanent locations. The stove was finally done this past weekend, the sink just a few weekends before.

We have a semblance of an L-island in place, but it won’t be like it is, we need to get some more cabinets and haven’t determined if we can get the type we want for the design we are going for, or will need to retro-fit some to do what we need.

Basically I need/want drawers for bases on the short part of the L shape, which will be paralell to the stove, adjacent to the sink, and be table-height, so I can chop anything/roll out dough in comfort. I’m short and 30″ high is my preference for any standing up work in the kitchen. It’s a must for dough and chopping, so I’ve alway had to use the dining table and that is something I do not like having to do. So with this “new” kitchen I have a temporary spot on the “island” though it’s not as wide nor doesn’t have the right sort of storage underneath, since we are using wall cabinets that are 30″ high for now, until we get them up on the walls. We have to find out if the manufactuer has 30″ or so high drawer bases they can get us, or if we can cut off the toe-kick on drawer bases (like we’ve bought for other areas of the kitchen) successfully.

It’s what I’ve dreamed of for some time, and have wished for partially since moving into this house late 1997. The kitchen was on the other end of this 20 ft. long space, but was right next to the garage, and had a pathway dividing the main work counter, which was right next to the door, and the stove was on the other side of the door with no space horizontally next to it to work on (which I desire strongly to have for cooking with) it was basically jammed into a corner on the left with 12″ of counter space on the right.

We removed the French Doors that were on the other end of the kitchen. That’s where the sink is now, with the Fridge down towards the middle of the kitchen, about right across from where it started out in 1997. Basically the design used to be a glorified galley, two sections of counter and appliances separated by the garage enterance/walkway.

Now it’s an area with enough space to cook in. The stove has 36″ of horizontal space on the left, and 30″ and then a corner on the right. :smile:

The sink is one nice triangle space to the rear/right when at the stove. The L-island “baking center” is directly behind the stove. Basically the space will be a Double-L design, but an inverted Double-L from what I’ve mostly seen on paper.

We have to get a new window for over the sink still. We did get one for free, but it wasn’t installed as I wanted it, and it’s not going to work, even if it was re-installed correctly. We have a glass sliding door to install but have some plumbing work to finish before that can happen. We have to paint and fix a few drywall things, and decide on how to finish out the area we removed part of a wall.

Then we can put in the wall cabinets then install the base cabinets on the outside “regular” part of the kitchen. Then at that point we are going to put in wood floor and THEN put the island on top of the wood floor. That will give us a counter around the kitchen that is more like 35-inches tall, then the island with the 30″ baking center and 36″ bar and work counter. That’s the current initial plan, at least.

We’ve changed the plan time and again, before we bought any cabinets, then settled on something, bought the cabinets, then after a bit decided to change the layout again, somewhat back to my original desires though.

Thus far it’s great to have things where they should be, appliance-wise. I’ve found the few meals I’ve made to be much more efficent in prep than ever before, and that’s super duper for a Mama of 4, with one being a baby, and none of them helpful enough in the kitchen to aide me in cooking, really. I love to cook, but hate the daily chore of it. I hate clean-up. It’s tiresome too being so short in comparison with my kitchen counters and cabinets. So finally, I have something to chop on that isn’t the table and doesn’t kill me and nearly get my fingers chopped off, having to stand on my toes to chop on high (to me) counters. The “feeling” of the kitchen is finally right. That oriental chi stuff, I’m not into that, but I can say that “feeling” is important and some of the prinicples I’ve read of about it seem right on with much of comfortable design and for placement of things in rooms for working/living.

My kitchen feels so right, when it has always felt so very, very wrong, and it’ll get more “right” as time goes on. Wow. :smile: