More progress in the kitchen

Helloooo lovely kitchen! You can see the progress, and a bit more of the grand plan with these photos after the second day of installing the cabinets.

For the past 16 months we've been using a combination of a small bar fridge that you have to get down on all fours to see what you have in it, and our old fridge which is housed outside on the porch (tucked away on one of the sides to keep it looking classy here, ha!). This might explain why I love this fridge so much; it's indoors for one, and it sure is purdy. Oh, and it has an ICE MAKER. This is big news for me, I've never had one. Living the life now...

And here's where the island sits, and it will house the cooktop, pop-up fan, microwave, and compactor.

Cabinets in the kitchen

We've been planning the kitchen since August, and it's been relatively smooth getting to this point (a lot of decisions, haggling and a smidge of stress). One thing I should note is that I'm horrible at making decisions -- I want things that I love to the point that I'm jumping up and down excited about them, every time I see them. Not high expectations at all, right? You'd wonder why on earth I'd want to renovate a house when I know I'm like that. 

But I digress.

With this kitchen, we wanted drawers galore, because in our last house, we had horrible corner cupboards that were so deep your hand crossed into another dimension searching for something inside of them. Another winner was the cupboard above the microwave that held all of the plastic wrap boxes that liked to tumble out at you when you opened the doors.

We've had to work with a bit of an odd shape, with the original layout just being a small galley-style kitchen (if you'd even call it that, I prefer festering rat nest that they used as a kitchen), adjoined to a family room that was long and narrow. It made no sense to us to cram a small kitchen in where it was originally, so we scooped up the family room space to make an 'L'-shaped area for cabinets and the island.

So, here's the start of the good (and pretty) stuff, hurrah!

Where the island will live.

Appliances huddling up in the future kitchen table area.

On to the mudroom

Seeing as we have a washer and dryer sitting in storage, we decided to hit the mudroom next so we can stop using the in-law's laundry facilities (which we've been doing for the past 15 months). The same orange waffle material was put down on the floor, and wiring applied for this room's heat. We don't have any wall space to mount a heater, so floor heating is a good option for us here.

The tile we're using is a flattened pebble type of thing, I wanted something kind of different, and something that could withstand a lot of dirt without looking dirty right away. This floor needs to work with us, not against us.*

*Well, installing it was a different story. That's a whole other post.