We live in a 1970s rancher in the Central Valley of California. It is a very typical house for this area, stucco on the outside, tiled floors on the inside and lots of windows. We bought the house because it had a huge lot, relatively speaking for this area, and it has solar panels, and a swimming pool – which is a must in an area where the summer temperatures peak over 100 degrees for months on end.
I guess when we looked at the house, we were so fed up with looking at houses we really didn’t take notice of the kitchen. It looked pretty good at a glance, but in actuality was badly designed. We have suffered for about 10 years with 35 year old cabinets, lined with thick linoleum (whoever thought this was a good idea). The drawers would kind of drop out when you pulled on them, the dishwasher was poorly placed, and if there was ever more than 2 people in the kitchen, it became aggravatingly congested in certain spots – where the only available counter space was situated. And whoever did the half-assed kitchen renovation previously, decided to use granite floor tiles on the counter top. The grout between the tiles was impossible to clean, and harbored who knows what kind of microbes and bacteria.
About a year ago, my husband and I became really annoyed with the cabinets. It was about the time of the Spring Garbage pick-up, where homeowners were allowed to put any and all types of garbage on the curb, and the city would come by and pick it up. In a moment of total disgust, we pulled all the drawers out, and the cabinet doors off and put them on the curb. Talk about an open concept in the kitchen. And it stayed that way, until we couldn’t tolerate it anymore.
At first we thought maybe we could do the renovation ourselves. But who were we kidding? After we started adding up the costs of the cabinets and sink, and lighting, it didn’t make that much sense. To avoid the aggravation of trying to right our kitchen by ourselves we hired a construction company to come in and do all the work. For almost 4 weeks we lived with dust, the sound of jackhammers, contractors showing up at 0730 and a kitchen without running water or a place to cook. I tried to prepare meals out of an Instant Pot, and off an electric griddle, but it was too annoying and frustrating, and we finally had Uber Eats bring us all of our food.
Our kitchen is finally done, and what a joy it is to have a functional kitchen, laid out correctly. Now more than one person can be preparing food at the same time. It’s clean and tidy, and despite not having upper cabinets, everything has a storage place. And no more linoleum, with corners curling up, inside the cabinets.
There is a place for everything!
The island – obviously
Open shelving – much nicer for tall people, and makes putting dishes away so much easier.
The kitchen looking out onto family room.
The dishwasher is in the island.
And look – a drawer that most of my regularly used spices fit in. No more scrabbling around in a cabinet, looking for that certain spice.
Photo credit: pinterest.com