Unless the Lord Builds the House

Building the house one room at a time

Our Little House~ The Kitchen Part 1

by Missy | Oct 10, 2018 | Unless the Lord Builds the House

Our next project was the kitchen. This has been an ongoing project with two stages so far and a few more to come. Just like in many of the homes built in that time, the kitchen was on the small side and had a poor layout. Our first task was to change the window sizes in order to accommodate the new cabinets. I’m not really sure what this large window was supposed to be looking at but it had a great view of a rock wall that had been covered with a chain link fence, but I digress. Where were we? Oh yes, the kitchen. Now we were coming from a house with a nice sized kitchen where we loved to cook and had a plethora of kitchen utensils and other kitchen paraphernalia. So, in order to create an adequate space we had to make some changes.

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The Windows

We removed the large window, blocked up the space that would be covered by the new cabinets and replaced it with a new smaller window. Also, we made the window overlooking the back deck larger.

The Lower Cabinets

We pulled out the cabinets and proceeded to build new ones to fill the space. The lower cabinets span from the entrance from the living room all the way to the back door. In order to accommodate the appliances as well as the sink we opted to place the sink in the corner. To the right of the stove we included a pull out spice rack, large pull out drawers and two pull out trash receptacles; one for trash and the other for recycling.

The Upper Cabinets

When it came to the upper cabinets, we put a lot of thought into them. We were always very annoyed by the loss of space in standard cabinets due to the sides of the cabinets themselves when several cabinets were put together in a row. Also, we hated the thought of lost space above the cabinet. So, we decided to make ours one very large cabinet all the way to the ceiling. Now, I feel the need to point out that my husband has a go big or go home approach to building anything. So, all the cabinets in the house are built to take a beating. Believe me, a lesser cabinet would be sagging under the weight of all the plates I have stacked in that upper cabinet. As I recall, it took four people to get this sucker in place.

The Pull-Out Pantry

Next we had to commandeer the closet space from one of the bedrooms to be used as a pull out pantry. The pull out has three drawers two of which are two levels. The lowest drawer only has one level and is best suited for the heaviest items such as cans and bags of flour. We put it to the test recently when we had 6 dozen cans of various beans and diced tomatoes. I have to say I was impressed.

Counter tops and Flooring

For both the counter tops and the flooring we chose laminate based completely on the expense. Yes, out of necessity, we had to go cheap. I do have to admit that even after 11 years of pretty intense use, they both look better than expected.

The Tile Backsplash

We lived with those ugly blue walls for a while before we finally decided to finish the basksplash. This was my first attempt at tile but luckily my Husband and Father had quite a bit of experience. We even had our oldest pitch in to put the tile around the windows.