Dreaming & Scheming - The Kitchen Revisited

It's time for an updated version of the old Dreaming & Scheming Kitchen post from October of 2013.  Last week I shared some inspiration pictures and the breakdown of the big To Do list, but I wanted to share some more details of where we stand right now for the actual design.

I used Ikea's kitchen planner to show you what I think it'll look like, though until the wall comes down nothing is 100%.  I don't think we'll go with Ikea cabinets (currently we are thinking of doing something much crazier), but their planner is just so easy to use.  I did the best I could using Ikea's standard cabinets.  

The peninsula was the hardest to create because it did NOT want me to flip it around and have the doors open towards the dining room and I gave up which is why it doesn't reach the wall on that one side (in real life it will).  Computers, ugh.

In real life the sink will be centered under the window, but with their cabinet sizes and sink size it was hard to make that work without a gap.

Right now we only have one stretch of counter top on either side of the sink.  So this picture of having a L shaped counter in addition to a little peninsula and an area on either side of the stove is crazy.  I NEED ALL THE SURFACES.

I want shaker style drawer fronts and doors and I like this gray color.  I also like the dark handles.  Currently we are leaning towards butcher block counter tops.  I want to do the backsplash with white subway tile and on the wall with the sink it'll go up the ceiling!  ACCENT WALL!

Look at that beauteous DISHWASHER.  That weird area to the right is the peninsula which will look normal in real life.

There's a lazy susan in the corner:

This picture makes me want to chose a smaller fridge.  We'll definitely have to tape this part out on the floor to play around with dimensions to maximize space without it feeling suffocating when you come in from the breezeway and/or pantry/laundry room area.  We might end up moving the garbage by the sink to shorten the one stretch of counter.

Here are some pictures again but this time I'll write what's going in each section.  I think it's really important to think this through before picking your cabinets because as you're putting your stuff away it's too late to add & move drawers around.

By Baking Tools I mean measuring cups & spoons, whisks, pastry cutter, biscuit cutters, rolling pin, etc.  

By Baking Pantry I mean I am going to move my containers of baking powder/soda, salt, vanilla extract, cocoa powder, etc over into this drawer.

The appliances I want to put in the lazy susan corner cabinet are the rice maker, popcorn maker, panini press, & crock pot.

By Kitchen Gadgetry I mean the cheese grater, mandolin, kitchen scale, ladle, can opener, garlic press, peeler, pineapple corer etc.

By Cooking Utensils I mean tongs, spatulas, wooden spoons,  hot pads etc.

By "Junk" Drawer I mean that's where we'll put tape, scissors, batteries, matches, a tape measurer, menus etc.

I am torn about having seating at the peninsula.  The dining room table will be right behind it with a window seat under the dining room window.  I just think it might be tough to even fit stools over there and have room around the table.  I mostly want the peninsula just to maximize counter space and to give a place to put mason jars and the canner.


And on to the most controversial part, open shelving!

I don't want to be dusting all the time.  So I am only putting things on the shelves that will either be used a lot or things that are used rarely and need to be rinsed off even if they're in a cabinet.  

My only stipulation is that things looks nice.  So I'll probably put my Le Creuset dutch oven up there, my cake plates, some nicer mixing bowls, just anything that'll look good up there and needs a home.

I just showed the shelf, but there will be brackets holding them up.  I am undecided about wooden ones painted the wall color or having metal ones that would stand out.   Here's one of my inspiration pictures:

Height-wise, I was going to start from the standard placement for upper cabinets and adjust if need be so the blender fits under the bottom shelf.  Right now I'm just thinking two shelves on either side of the sink, because I don't want to create dusting work for myself, but there is potential for a third shelf.

Another thing that was hard to draw was that I am envisioning my mug collection hanging on cup hooks under all of the shelves.  I can't wait to unpack that box!

Also when I say glassware, I just mean our regular every day glasses.  The wine glasses and probably some overflow regular glasses will go in the future dining room built-ins.



And here's a bonus, I was going through old pictures and found this one of the original hardwoods that are hidden under the nasty carpet.  I forgot how beautiful they are!  This is the floor in Bedroom #2.  Here's to hoping it is under the nasty stick-on kitchen floor.

Crafty Homestead Garden Notebook

Today was a very good mail day because my two new journals came!  I used Christmas money to treat myself to expensive custom journals.  They are from Paper Source and could not be cuter or more awesome.  When I finish my current To Do List journal and my writing-thoughts-down journal I will replace them with Paper Source journals.

Things I Love About These Notebooks:

• my pens fit into the spiral
• pens don't bleed through to the other side of the page
• they are spiral so they lay flat and can be folded in half
• they are so pretty
• I got 10% off the order

One journal (pictured above) is for all things garden.  When we were house (originally land) hunting I had a notebook that I kept everything in.  As we saw properties & took notes on them and made various lists everything was all in one place.  It was so nice to grab that notebook and know that anything that I would want to reference was in there.  No lists or notes were lost along the way.  I also do that for my To Do lists now.  I love having them all in one place and I love buying cute notebooks!

So I customized the cover of the notebook with "Crafty Homestead Garden."  I didn't put 2015 because it has so many pages I am sure we get at least two years out of it.  I picked grid paper for the inside because I want to sketch out garden bed plans in it among other things.  This way as the summer goes on and I want to write myself notes to reference when I'm planning next year (too much zucchini, move pumpkins next year, etc) they will all go in one place.  And when I want to remember what exactly we planted in that corner over there, I can flip back to the beginning and see the plan that I sketched out in Spring.  

For now I have two pages used already.  One is a list of what we want to plant this year and one is a list of goals for 2015 (based on what I struggled with last summer).

In case you can't read my handwriting I typed them out.

What To Plant This Year:

• tomatoes - grape, black krim
• basil
• cucumbers - regular, pickling
• carrots
• kale
• lettuce
• zucchini
• butternut squash
• pumpkins
• onions
• garlic
• green onions
• peppers
• brussel sprouts
• potatoes
• broccoli
• cauliflower
• sweet potatoes

2015 Garden Goals:

• stay on top of trimming & harvesting the basil
• make enough pesto for the year
• stay on top of weeding
• work on tomato bursting
• regular, deep watering
• try succession planting
• expand the garden dramatically
• check zucchini daily to avoid growing crazy monsters
• do fall planting again
• more than just garlic?
• keep track of how much we plant so we know how much more/less to plant in 2016
• do more from seeds than last year
• (which was zero) 

I want to get to the point where we are growing most of the vegetables that we need for the year.  So storing potatoes, onions, & garlic in the basement and freezing broccoli florets and canning tomatoes, etc.  I know it'll take several years to figure out how much we need to plant of each kind so that we have enough for the whole year, and documenting how much we plant this year is the first step.  Once we know how much to plant to feed ourselves the goal will change to planting enough to have some to sell.

My other notebook I personalized with my initials and used datebook pages on the inside.

 

This will be my planner.  A lot of my To Do Lists will move in to this notebook, along with meal plans for the week, and hopefully soon a work schedule.  It has lots of pages so it should be good for at least a year if not two.  I love that the Month spot is blank so you can start using this whenever you want in the year.  Plus if you miss a week you won't be wasting any pages.  The last column on the right is just a "Notes" column and I like having space that is not assigned to a specific day.  I used this week's blank spot for the grocery list :)

The Craft Room Makeover

 Here is the ugly truth of the Craft Room Before:

Stuff everywhere, too much stuff, 1 too-small table, 1 too-big table, 2 new pieces of furniture for the new layout all stuffed into a small "den" sized room.

It was claustrophobic and I couldn't craft in there. And people coming over for Corey's birthday was my motivation to get moving on the transformation that I had been meaning to do for months.

The plan for the transformation is to create an area for me and an area for Corey. My area is broken up into a sewing desk and a paper-crafting desk.  Corey is still figuring out what he wants to do with his area.

I bought 2 storage pieces at Ikea and had already reorganized stuff out of my old plastic drawers into the new pieces back in September.

I got an Alex drawer unit for the sewing area. The top 2 drawers having sewing stuff (thread, needles, small scraps, patterns), 1 has all the letters & postcards that I've ever gotten, 1 is old photos, and 1 is my Drawer of Technology that holds chargers, cords, old cell phones, camera cases etc.

I also got a Helmer drawer unit for the paper-crafting area to hold scissors, gluesticks, paper, stamps, ink, craft paint etc.

I had already bought the 2 new pieces at Ikea, so the next step was spray painting my old file cabinet white to match them.  The top file drawer has all my high school & college files that I am keeping and the bottom one has all adult stuff like taxes, insurance, house stuff etc.

I've had this since junior high and $0 is nice on the budget. I used the white appliance spray paint that I had originally bought for a redo on a used garage freezer, but then it broke and we bought a brand new one instead. So I was happy to have a use for this already paid for spray paint.

Before:

During:

After:

I got lucky because I got this done on the last nice warm day in November. It doesn't look perfect, but it looks way better and it's f-r-e-e.

Here is the room after I sorted & decluttered, with the wrong sized tables out of the room, and the 3 new pieces in place and 1 temporary place holder in place:

The plastic drawer unit has all my fabric in it and I am going to build a new piece to hold it all in a better way. But until I do the plastic drawer unit is there.

The corner is still a mess. Some of it will go in the last piece that I still need to build, and lots of it will go into the not-yet-built living room bookcases one day. And I also want to build some window seating/storage in the two corners at some point.

The desktops are oak veneer plywood cut to size.  I attempted to match them to the wood trim stain like I did with the coat hooks.

Pre-stain, post-wood conditioner:

Post-stain:

Wiping off:

All done:

And in place in the Craft Room:

The sewing area (machine under desk because plastic drawers can't take any weight

The paper-crafting area

It is so luxurious to have two separate crafting areas!  


Still to do in here:

• build the wooden fabric storage piece to replace the plastic drawers
• add some sort of quarter round to the desktops for a more finished look
• add shelving on the walls above the desks
• redo Corey's corner

Still to do in the next round at some point:

• refinish the wood floors under the carpet
• build window seats/storage in the corners
• make roman shades for the windows
• buy my way-too-expensive dream desk chair on a fabulous sale and wheel it back and forth between my two areas on our refinished wood floors

Since getting the Craft Room to this point I have already finished a quilt!  It's so nice to be able to be in there and have it feel so open.  I am glad it's usable now because I have quite a few homemade Christmas presents to work on!

Real Furniture!

Corey & I have bought some furniture before, mostly off Craigslist.  Almost all of what we have is free hand-me-downs.  Up until this point what we've bought has always been something I knew we'd resell/repurpose/relegate to the basement in a few years. I didn't want to spend lots of money on furniture while we lived in an apartment. For example we bought a used futon & a kitchen cart.  Both will probably end up in the basement once we redo the kitchen and buy a real couch. 

Besides our king sized bed & matching nightstands, this is our first piece of Real Furniture.  It is a buffet that will go in the dining room once we redo the kitchen, but for now is in the living room (where I'd like a fireplace to go one day).

It is made of real wood and was refinished locally. I do need to sand down the tops of the doors though because they keep getting stuck.

Underneath are frames for a gallery wall I want to do in the living room

Right now it is overloaded with decorate-y details, but once we get the hooks & bench built all that stuff will spread out.  The giant silver thing is our ice maker.

I love the wood top the best! It stands out against the painted bottom and is so gorgeous.  With our unpainted wood trim and future wood floors I have to be careful with wood furniture. I don't want the house to start feeling too dark & heavy. I'd rather showcase some wood and have it stand out.

As for how we filled it, I'll show you. The top left drawer has plastic kid dishes for when my nieces & nephews come over:

 The middle drawer has cloth napkins, placemats, & dish towels:

The right drawer has serving silverware and extra regular silverware:

The bottom left cabinet has a drink dispenser & some raspberry jam (our pantry didn't have enough room for the double batch).  The door was stuck so I couldn't get a shot.

The bottom middle cabinet has serving platters & bowls and extra glassware (I can't wait to have a bigger kitchen!):

The bottom right cabinet has a coffee dispenser for parties & a wine holder for picnics. Again the door was stuck so no picture.

It is so much fun to furnish & organize the house!

My Dream Closet: the IKEA Pax Wardrobe

Putting together IKEA furniture is tedious and hurts my fingers. But, this was the best way to get exactly what I wanted for my dream closet.  This is their PAX wardrobe system. You buy the big rectangles and then decide how to fill them in with the KOMPLEMENT storage system. There's shelves, drawers, baskets, shoe racks, etc.  Here's what I got:

-1 wide frame with

• 4 wide wooden drawers
• 3 wide shelves
• 1 wide clothes rail
• 2 wide zip-up clothes storage bins

-1 skinny frame with

• 2 shelves
• 6 wire baskets

 

-1 wide frame with

• 1 wide dresser unit
• 1 wide clothes rail
• 1 add-on clothes rail
• 1 wide shelf

Here's a picture of 1 wide frame and my skinny frame:

Sorry this is a cell phone pic taken at night

This one is from a real camera but is a little too zoomed in:

 And here's the other wide frame:

Right now 1 wide frame & the skinny frame are in what will be our bedroom for now. The second wide frame is in Bedroom #2. The long term plan is that these will be in our master suite either in a walk in closet, or along the wall and then we'll add doors.

Now because I'm an organization freak and love this kind of thing, here's pictures showing where everything will go once we live there:

Here's some pictures of the lovely stages of putting together IKEA furniture: