The kitchen in its current state

Yup, yup. It's been forever, I know.

I have no excuse. Ok, maybe I do and it mostly pertains to my own laziness in dealing with the fact that our photo library is on an external hard drive up in the spare bedroom that I never want to step foot in since it appears that a craft store blew up in there. 

Enter: new phone with easy blogging capabilities.

Anyway, we've been trucking away on the kitchen and making lots of progress. 

We both got iPhone 5s this past week and I'm still learning how to use it. The panoramic photo function is a great way for us to show everything that is going on in our tight little kitchen. Of course, I forgot to crop out the weird black parts on the top and bottom before posting. 

And please ignore the construction material that is currently taking up 1/3 of my large swath of counter space. It's the only way to stay motivated. 

Feel free to admire my new giant rolling pin purchased for $9 at the restaurant supply store. I love that place!

Not much has happened on this side of the kitchen. We need to put up some 1/4 round molding around the other molding and build out some new, wide windowsills both so I can fill them with plants and so Pepin has a nice place to sit while we cook. 

He's been complaining to us for months about his lack of lounge-space. Kidding, kind of. 

We're loving our new Overstock.com stools and even purchased an extra set so more people can squeeze in if wanted. And at a price of $80 for two, it wasn't too much of a stretch. Have you priced stools lately? Apparently spending over $100 on a single stool is not crazy! 

And they come in lots of fun colors. We opted for the fun, tangerine hue because at this point, why avoid color? 

The sink area has been one of my planning triumphs of this project. I was pretty insistent on an undermount sink so water wouldn't pool around the overhang and damage the wood. I also wanted to have access to all of the butchers block for oiling purposes. And while a little pricy, we manages to save a good bit by purchasing a "used" one from Amazon Warehouse (meaning that someone had it shipped to them then returned it, it had never actually been installed). The extra cost was totally worth it for two reasons: 1) The thick gague stainless is sturdy, soundproof, and doesn't vibrate the whole counter when using the garbage disposal. 2) The sink is extra deep (10" as opposed to the 7"-8" norm) which is so helpful to those of us with gigantic pots and pans but without the space to install a wider sink. 

And I am totally in love with the faucet. It is sturdy, the finish doesn't show fingerprints (a true triumph in our house!), and can be operated with a wrist when hands are messy. And the actual pull-out sprayer has an awesome momentary shut off button so we can pull it over to the stove to fill a pot rather than lugging it out of our extra deep sink after full (so maybe the extra depth is a mixed bag). 

Crown molding over the cabinets has been a slow, slow process.  The ceiling is nowhere near level and the area around the leftmost cabinet is totally out of whack. The stretch of ceiling where we pulled out the old soffit had some bulging plaster that had to be butted up against my drywall patchwork leaving a distinct high spot (or low spot?) that the crown molding had to fit around. So Michael was left with the task of planing down those two pieces of molding on the left cabinet for at least 10 hrs until it was a perfect fit. The middle cabinet's molding went up relatively quickly (only a few hours, maybe) but the last cabinet is going to be another pill, requiring a good bit of carving to fit.

 And as I knew would be the case, we are now faced with forcing ourselves to install the finishing touches (lots of tile and molding) while keeping ourselves from just cooking all day in our functionally complete, brand shiny new, kitchen. 

*sigh*

Wanna see my Kitchen?

 No, not this kitchen!

 Upon seeing this post (or maybe it was this post) a few weeks back, our nephew Noah said something along the lines of, "Wow, Aunt Lauren and Uncle Michael's kitchen is a mess!"

Noah is correct, our kitchen is truly a mess (but a mess that is coming along), but that doesn't mean that we haven't been eating well.

We do, after all, have a place to cook...

 Why, Hello Basement!

 Yup, this where the magic happens, so to speak.  

Here we have our beloved John Boos end-grain cutting board, our knife block, mortar & pestle, hand-crank coffee grinder, and our hot water kettle all living on a hand-me-down library table.

 And on this side we have the microwave and KitchenAid below and on top (from left to right) is our toaster oven, rice cooker, blender, and induction burner.

I'd also like to note that the table on this side of the "kitchen" is a family heirloom, my Vogler grandparents' first piece of purchased furniture after they were married. In my mind, it is very fitting that so many decades later (it must be at least 8 decades? Dad?), it is being used as 1/2 of our kitchen in our first house.

 The blender isn't a normal fixture but was on the "counter" to make some ice cream a few days ago. (really amazing candied bacon ice cream, I should note)

 And that sink back there on the right, that's my dishwashing sink with the dish strainer on the floor.

 On the opposite side of the basement is where we store our cookware and dishes.

And just to the left of that is our "pantry", also known as the built in basement storage cabinet.

The only thing really missing is an oven.

But the fact that this will be mine soon makes it all worth it.

And if you think about it, we have far more kitchen space now than we ever did in France.

Vogler Visit-A-Palooza

My Mom, Malena, my Dad, and all of his tools arrived just about two weeks ago.  

 Give my dad a week and his tools (and 24 hr access to the house that you're not evening living in yet) and before you know it, 

 Every pipe that runs though your basement will be found lying on the floor of said basement.

 Yup, every one. 

 And you'll find him tinkering with the circuit box. 

 This is our pretty new plumbing stack. This wasn't courtesy of my dad but of the sellers and a great plumber.

 Here are more pipes lying in the (one full) bathroom floor.

 And just when we get on a roll (in this case, tearing down the kitchen soffit and just about to slice his ear open)

 Michael comes home and informs you that his car is "broken",

 As in, makes a grating noise every time he tries to brake. So they spend the next couple hours taking off tires,

 And having the car fall off the jack (but thankfully, hot hurting anyone aside form a few scrapes), and eventually getting it fixed (Michael now knows how to change brakes!).

 Malena made herself at home, as always.

 And right when we were getting into the plumbing groove, I had a freak accident where I dropped a piece of copper pipe that I was in the process of cutting on the spigot of our hot water heater. Water surged out of the heater and it was unusable for the next 3 or so days that it took us to locate a new spigot and a tap to make some new threads. 

 The soffit is almost gone!

 And on to the most dreaded part of the week (as soon as we were able to find another strapping young man to help us), moving my 500lb mixer into the basement. 

 Smooth so far

 There's bits of kitchen debris in the wheelburrow, lumber for our raised-bed garden and a big mixer all occupying our back yard.

 The scariest part, down the stairs.

 Mischief managed

 And there's a mixer in my basement! (and new copper pipe behind!)

 Hello best friend. Too bad I have no oven to bake anything I make in you.

 Later on: stretching and petting 

 And more petting

 Why won't anyone play wiffle ball with me?

 It's didn't take long for Malena to usurp the couch.

 Raised-bed garden going in

 And 8 heirloom tomato plants to go in the garden.

 We had another puppy visitor, I just had to see Fozzie (and Carolyn) before the move to DC.

 Slowly, slowly filling up.

And on our last night together, Malena got to go to a restaurant with and clean all of those yummy plates.

Thank you SO MUCH Mom and Dad! Without you coming out to visit, we'd have no garden planted and terrible water pressure!

Want Another Peek?

Last week I mentioned that along with actually buying the new house, we will be essentially doing a gut job of the current kitchen and today I'll be giving you a clue as to why:

 This is the kitchen as it is at the moment, and by that I mean that this is the entire kitchen space. And while you may be saying "Hey, those don't look too bad!", be assured in knowing that looks, in this case, are decieving. See that drawer on the upper right side (and the one on the upper left side for that matter?), I tried to pull it out only to realize that there is no longer a track for it to roll on.

 The rest of the room (with that adorable, if poorly adorned bay window) was made as an eat in area, but we would prefer kitchen counter and cabinet space (with some integrated seating perhaps?) over space for a big kitchen table. So, along with some design help, we'll be adding in a lot!

Image Source

And this is our new darling. We were hoping to put in a pro-style stove since I've been very spoiled in my lifetime both from my parents' pro-style and many years of commercial kitchen work. But with the hefty price-tags and similar heat outputs to some slightly upgraded home ranges (e.g. this stove), we figured we wouldn't be able to justify a pro-style.

We hit the jackpot though -- so to speak -- last weekend when we walked into a small, family-owned designer appliance store and came across this baby (minus the backsplash, which I prefer not to have anyway) that was being sold as a floor model for 2/3 the original price. 

On Monday I went back to the store to put down a deposit and they will be holding on to it until we have a nice kitchen space all ready for it to be delivered into and installed. 

Dream (relatively speaking, in a starter home) kitchen, here we come!