Ending up where I should have started a long time ago.

When we first moved into this house, lo these fifteen months ago, we dd a lot of thinking and planning and dreaming about how we'd make it into our own over time. We're still thinking and planning and dreaming (as is the state of pretty much every homeowner ever, I suppose), but bit by bit, those plans have begun to take on actual existence outside our heads and conversations.

The very first project was...

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Our kitchen looked like this on the day we signed all the paperwork.

Back to the early 80s. Which was when the house was built. Almost immediately those (possibly) original appliances were carted off and replaced with these new lovlies.


The cabinets and counters remain. For now. Because a kitchen renovation is a giant endeavor and we're just not there yet. But we were feeling a little cramped for kitchen storage (kind of funny, since we'd pretty much doubled our storage space from the miniature kitchen we'd had in the apartment, but ::shrugs::) and there was this big empty space.

Sure, we could have just found some shelving or a baker's rack or an armoire or something, but instead of wasting time and money on something absolutely temporary, T decided to construct the template for what will, eventually, be the cabinetry for the entire kitchen! Which, let's be honest, is *way* awesome. In time, all that bleh off-white fake yuck cabinetry will match this gorgeous, custom-made cherry wood beauty. (And yes, that wallpaper will also be history at some point as well. Ahem.)

Want a little peek inside?

We've played around with the arrangement a bit, because daily use is the best way to fine tune. First, there was this...

...but there was an awful lot of unused space over there on the left. That bugged me. So we added a shelf in there, which worked for a while. Until we got married and had some fabulous new cookware to house. So we tweaked a little more and came up with this! The perfect solution to all our beautiful new Calphalon which was a wedding gift (via gift card purchase) and a few old friends not yet ready for retirement.

And while that is a multitude of awesome, the lower half steals all the thunder.


It's *really* difficult to compete with pull-out spice racks and shelves-that-are-actually-drawers for canned and jarred goods. And that little deal on the bottom left? A drawer with slots for all those awkward-to-store kitchen necessities, like muffin tins and cooling racks and cookie sheets. On the right, the top drawer is divided for all kinds of utensils. The next two shallower drawers hold all manner of various kitchen-related odds and ends that are useful but awkward to store (like manual can openers and corn cob handles and my beloved citrus trumpet, to name just a few). The drawer below them has dishtowels in it and the big deep drawer has bulkier items, like the mandolin, various attachments for the KitchenAid mixer, the cord for the electric griddle. The slow cooker and the electric griddle share that cubby on the bottom, thanks to another handy dandy shelf. It's pretty ridiculous how much I love what T created here. It's been in for over a year and sometimes I still stand in front of it with all the doors open and just grin. I cannot wait to see the kitchen in its full glory one of these days...and in the mean time, I am busy saving ideas on Pinterest, so that when T asks if I have any requests, I'm ready to go!