my kitchen!

...this is my kitchen as i envision in in my mind. maybe you can see the 2 sample counter chips- they are a pretty mottled blue, with grey and black flecks. one is shiny, and the other is matte. not sure which one I'll pick yet, but I'm leaning towards the shiny one.

...and here we have the healthy dose of reality! this is the kitchen as it looks now! (remember, I'm the eternal optimist!) there is also a picture of how the kitchen looked on the day we bought the house in the blog "in the beginning" it's the second picture.

when we bought the house, there was a kitchen, of sorts, but it was awful. the cabinets were plastic and other than the sink, that was pretty much it for traditional kitchen. in the course of the ripping out, Dave decided that the kitchen has to go. so now I'll get a newly designed Lowe's kitchen much sooner than i thought. i enjoyed designing my kitchen. it was very painless, and i was surprised at how easy and quick it was. there was so much to choose from, but we had already decided on white cabinets- that would look kind of old and farmhousey. i just told the guy what i wanted, and a few clicks of the mouse later, he printed out my pictures. all this will have to wait, though, until the foundation issues in the addition are resolved, sometime this spring.

so meanwhile, i continue to dream... and plan. mark W. was up in the beginning of march, and graciously offered to help. (didn't have to ask twice!!) he wired the kitchen for us. but before he did that, he took out the end window, and also took out the door, and made that into a window. i had decided to change things around, since the kitchen was very inefficiently laid out, with 5 doors and 2 windows. it was going to be impossible to have an eat-in kitchen, which is what we want. with this new layout, we have a more normal sounding 2 doors and 2 windows.

we really enjoyed having mark for the day, and i know that it was a big help to Dave to have him. mark just took off, and worked his way around the room- ripping out windows and doors, and replacing the door with our new window. then he ran all the wires, making sure that we would have enough plugs and switches- and before the day was done, we had a safely and efficiently wired kitchen! we are thankful for good friends like mark, and his son D.

this is the second kitchen that mark has worked on for me- he did most of the renovations on the high street kitchen. after i had closed on that house, he told me that i should watch the movie "the money pit", starring tom hanks and some lady. (can't remember who at the moment) i took his advice, and after i was done watching it, i was a bit panicked! obviously, we didn't watch that movie again before buying this house! anyway, it's always fun to have mark around, and we both would give our eye teeth to have been a fly on the wall at his house, and hear what he said to Kathy when he got home that night!