Kitchen Island Upgrade

Quick keto update: I've lost twelve pounds now, and Husband has lost five. Husband cheats a little more on the diet than I do, but he's also a lot closer to his goal weight than I am, so I think that's why he's lost fewer pounds. 

We've been spending a lot of time at Home Depot lately. Husband hates not feeling productive, and Home Depot is definitely a place where you can find things with which to feel productive.

Husband currently has two projects: the kitchen island and the backyard deck. I'll get to the deck in a future post.

Our main floor is cramped for space. The floor plan creates a big "U" from the front door, wrapping around the centrally located stairs (with stairs leading both down to the basement and up to the second floor), and then into the kitchen, which opens out into the double garage. Into that space, we've managed to fit living room seating, a piano (an electric one, not a full size real upright), a desk with two computers, and a dining table that we can extend with two leaves. That's a lot of furniture, and when we have people over, all available seating is used, plus someone always ends up having to sit on the stairs. We all have to squeeze around each other when we need to move.

We've been tempted more than once to turn one bay of the garage into a dining room just to relieve the congestion when we have big family gatherings. If it wasn't such an expensive proposition, we would probably already have done it. I also toyed with the idea of replacing the stairwells with a spiral staircase so we'd gain valuable floor space for seating as well as a half-bathroom on the main floor, but that also isn't a very cost-effective or viable plan. Plus, how would we go about moving large furniture, like beds and dressers, up to or down from the second floor or the basement?

via GIPHY

There was, however, one thing we could do to relieve some of the congestion between the kitchen island and the dining table, and that was to find a new island countertop that doesn't include an overhang for seating. To that end, Husband snapped up a perfectly-sized stainless steel countertop someone was selling for a hundred bucks. With the addition of a half-size, off-the-shelf base cabinet (which we got from Home Depot for 50% off because of some totally fixable damage), we now have a more functional, less intrusive kitchen island. Yesterday afternoon, my very handy Husband moved the island's electrical box, fitted in the new base cabinet, cladded it with matching veneer and trim, and then attached the new countertop.

My MIL sent over one of her delectable apple crumbles (in the round pan) despite our frequent mentions of eating keto. She uses food to show love, and she is also a great believer in cheating on your diet every once in a while. It's especially difficult when she sends over a plate of her homemade Welsh cakes, still warm from the griddle. Also shown: my soda (diet ginger-lime Coke, of course), a recipe for keto cinnamon rolls, and my cutting board with the amazing ceramic knife my daughter gave me. The knife's edge has remained razor-sharp for months now.

The new base cabinet doesn't match the style of our current cabinets, but we're painting all the base cabinets in the kitchen a dark gray and putting on new hardware so the new cabinet and the old cabinets will look more cohesive as an intentional set. I have hated the limed wood look on the cabinets for the last ten years now, and it's time for a color upgrade.

You can see how worn the cabinet fronts have become. 

Husband bought a paint sprayer to paint the fence (which he has done), and it will come in handy for painting all the drawer fronts and cupboard doors, as well.

My kitchen is a total mess right now or I would have taken more pictures to show you what we plan on doing with it. In short: replace the open shelving with new upper cabinets (open shelving is great, but I've acquired more appliances since we originally installed them, and the only place to put them was up on the shelves. Open shelving is only attractive if you have a very curated set of dishes and/or decor on display.), paint them white, and replace the hood over the stove. Also a possibility: removing the base cabinet and countertop between the dishwasher and the pantry wall and replacing them with a floor-to-ceiling pantry cupboard.

I want as much closed storage as I can get on the main floor. ClosetMaid does a tall cupboard that will fit nicely into the spaces on either side of the ductwork soffit on the dining wall (where you see the red Welsh dragon hanging), and once they're painted and trimmed to look like built-ins, a lot of clutter will disappear.

Of course, this means once again culling our possessions, which is a thought that always makes me tired. But we're not minimalists. The number of board games that we own is, by itself, a daunting thought!