updated kitchen post

Confession: We had to turn the heat on overnight one day last week. The temperatures were dipping to minus 8 celsius and we were worried the water might freeze in the pipes. On came the oil furnace for 12 hours, and off again in the morning. Blessedly, we are back up in the +double digits this weekend. I hope it lasts.

Lots of things going on this weekend for the house because WE HAVE A DEADLINE (for insulation). I called the company that I decided on hiring again (they spray this stuff) to see when they could come out to do our walls. Their date: November 24th. Twenty days from yesterday, three weekends from now.

To help us with the long list of things to do before the insulation gets sprayed in, we are inviting friends over this weekend who have expressed interest in helping with the house (aka those who pity our cold cold living conditions...). We need to pull thousands of tiny nails out of the wooden studs, put up windproof wrapping on the exterior of the house followed by lattice for our new exterior finish, remove hardwood and plaster from the front entry, shovel gravel around the cistern to be covered by poly plastic (making a barrier between wet ground and the inside of our house) and kill our roosters. The last step should be interesting, but upon arriving home last weekend we found an ominous feather pile that suggested something (mammal or large bird) had made our job easier by one. We still haven't found the body.

So tons of things to do. And hopefully some hands to help do it.

We tried to consult our local, well-respected kitchen guy about our kitchen. We could tell right off the bat he was not really impressed with our design (cooktop in the corner, unconventional refrigerator, no upper cabinets on one side of the room), didn't believe it was large enough given the size of the house, etc. etc. Depressing really, because I was hoping he could give me hints on efficient design and working around our interesting architectural features. No dice.

Instead I hopped on Ikea to use their kitchen planner and re-convinced myself this design would 1) work in our space and 2) work well for us. Here are some images of my rough draft where there are obvious alignment issues and blank white spaces where there should be black fridges or doorways into opposite rooms. Anyway, here's a few screen captures with lengthy explanations.

This is the view from the (currently invisible) door of the hallway entry. The hallway door will be an arched entry, and will be centered on the sink of the peninsula. On the left will be a bar countertop (currently too low and wayy too wide). On the right will be a wall of cabinetry and appliances (wall oven and glaring white fridge). The room is open to our "den" on the left and although not pictured in this set-up, we will have a small couch under the left-most window, and of course our wood stove in the opposite corner.

This would be the view from the woodstove corner. I was using Ikea website for ease and choice of cabinetry, but the wall heights on their program are too low. In reality our walls are about 1 foot taller than shown here, enough room for another small set of swing cabinets above the cabinets shown here. I want to line the ceiling with glass-front, back-lit doors because I think that will just highlight the incredible ceiling height. To make the most of our single corner, I have two pull out cabinets that operate from the other side of the work space. I was thinking this would be a good spot for re-useable grocery bags, giant bags of dog food, and pull-out recycling centres for newspapers/bottles/cans.

From above you can see the 30" cook-top in the corner over a bank of pot drawers next to the 24" dishwasher (with a panel), and two additional drawer banks tucked into the "workspace" corner. For whatever reason the sink function sucked donkey balls on the Ikea site so I left it out, and our end-piece is currently a 12" drawer bank but we aren't so keen on the aesthetics of that piece. We'll likely switch the a sink-side operating skinny bank of drawers there too. Space above the cooktop will stores oils and spices (attractive so it can be glass-fronted), and the blank space along the right hand side of the cook-top can either be a single length of wine bottle holder OR a tall upright stacking space for cookie sheets and such.

Looking from the bar top, the deficiencies in the Ikea program are apparent. I couldn't make my fridge black or stainless steel so it sticks out like a sore thumb between those two dark brown timbers. Further, the two symmetrical skinny banks of doors should open opposite to one another and be topped by a line of glass-fronted cabinets over another arch into the dining room (ie the big blank space of white on the right). The really deep cabinets on the left will hold dry goods in a few pull-out, pantry-style cabinets while the ones on the top and right will hold dishware, plastics, and small appliances. The moveable table under those giant windows will be our expandable prep space or storage space (if need be).

That turned into one giant post. Man, I love this part of construction :)