Evolution of my kitchen

This will be long, so sit down, grab a cup of tea. And a cookie.

This kitchen project has been a long and painful journey, and I am only half-way through.

Mind if I pour myself a drink while you drink that tea? I am going to need it.

The older pictures were taken with either my cel phone, or my pocket camera, so they are of not much quality, sorry about that.

The first part of this journey was to redesign the kitchen, that involved moving the kitchen from where the dining room is now to where the laundry room and maid’s room was supposed to go.

Here are the old and new plans side by side.

That almost doubled the size of the kitchen, gave us a huge amount of counter space, but most importantly, we got a window, which wasn’t planned for originally. It’s not a big window, mind you, but it is better than not having it.

The undermount, super-deep Franke sink, and tall, pull-out Hansgrohe faucet were from eBay too. They make washing pots a lot easier. No more splatters, baby! From Amazon we got the wall-mounted grocery bag holder and the brushed stainless paper towel holder

I found a local company (Marba, for the locals) that does hotel kitchens, and custom stainless steel kitchens. I measured the space for the backsplash and convinced some lady in sales to sell me at a very low price some leftover pieces of the stainless steel they used in their kitchens. Since I planned for the backsplash to center around the stove, it could be done with three smallish pieces.

I also convinced them to build the beveled backsplash and do the installation for the same price. It all cost about $350 dollars.

A trip from the Amazon fairy left me with the Leviton Acenti stainless steel plate meant for stainless steel walls (the black receptacle was also from Amazon). These have the advantage, besides the looks, that they have square corners, making it easier to cut the holes in the stainless steel.

There are cheaper alternatives to stainless steel, but this looks pretty cool, and the other choice I had in mind (back-painted glass) was not a viable choice for many reasons, not least of all because it was a lot more expensive (three times as much!). The stainless steel backsplash was more bang for my money. Totally worth it.

But it’s like expensive bling on an ugly woman. No amount of stainless steel was going to cure my kitchen blues. Those cabinet doors were irredeemable. It wasn’t a cosmetic problem only (I can fix that), they were just badly built. They had to go.

And go they did.