New Casa: The Kitchen

Yesterday I offered a quick tour of our whole home, but today and for the next week or so, I want to zoom in on various rooms throughout our home and explain the changes that we are dreaming up for each space.

Let's begin with the kitchen since that is the first room we fully unpacked and, for us especially, it's the center of our home.

Here's the kitchen as seen from the dining room.

To the right of the entry are the double ovens, a small counter space where we have set up our caffeine station, and the stove.

To the left of the stove is where I keep the utensils, knives, the canisters that house dry baking ingredients (flour and sugars), my beloved KitchenAid standing mixer, and the cookbooks I use the most often. So far this arrangement has been working out and helping me whip up cookies, cakes, and dinners.

What wasn't working was the paper towel holder that was attached to the underside of the cabinet, right above the knives and canisters. It was the first thing I removed in the new house; I did it pretty much the moment we moved in, and I was so eager to remove it that I forgot to snap a picture of the before and after. You have to trust me on this one. It was an eyesore.

The kitchen has a double sink with a garbage disposal, and the sink on the right is super deep, which is lovely. But it's baby diarrhea color is not. Perhaps that's why I didn't snap a pic...

To the left of the sink is a weird, dark little corner where I am trying to hide our dish rack, the microwave, and our water filter. Thankfully, the huge fridge - a Craigslist score for $300, no less - does a pretty good job of camouflaging this unsightly stuff.

To the left of the fridge is the door to the garage, and just beyond that is the counter that separates the kitchen from the dining room.

We currently have our fruit basket lounging on the counter, as well as the tin for dog treats, a cup for pens and scissors, and a cake stand that I hope will encourage me to bake. (It has. The story on that one later in the week.)

We hope to get some stools for the dining room side of the counter. But more than that, we want to refinish the cabinets, replace the yellowy-green tile countertops, and swap out the tile floor with hardwood.

Of course, we can't agree on what to do with the cabinets. Eventually we want to replace them, but the layout of the kitchen works for us, and while we are saving up, we thought we could just refinish/repaint them. The hubs likes stained wood, while I want to cover everything in paint. (Those who know us know we rarely agree on anything.) But I think we have found a middle ground: grey stained cabinetry.

Something like this...

Or maybe even something lighter like this, just without so much distressing.

We can't really decide if we like lighter or darker stains.

Or even something that tends towards a little more brown, but with grey undertones.

 But then I look at a graphite stain, and that looks pretty sweet too...

Thankfully, this project is not going down until summer at the earliest. (We have been warned that stripping cabinetry is not fun and takes for.ev.er.) But our plan as it stands right now is to strip the backside of a cabinet and try out various stains to find the one we like. Until then, what are your thoughts? 

(P.S. I forgot to jot down where the above pics came from, so if one of them is yours or you know who to credit, please let me know so I can give people their proper due.)