Kitchen photos

[JoNorvelleWalker]

19 minutes ago, FauxPas said:

Have you posted photos, Jo? 

 

This may have been taken from my balcony which is next to my kitchen window...

 

 

[FauxPas]

Just now, JoNorvelleWalker said:

This may have been taken from my balcony which is next to my kitchen window...

 

Nice! And it must be changing all the time through the seasons, varying weather, etc. 

[gfweb]

21 minutes ago, FauxPas said:

 

The views are actually better than that some days! 

 

It's essentially a very small house, we always thought of treating it as a bit of a cottage or beach house, though of course we aren't right on the beach. But that's why we went with the distressed-look for the flooring. And blue-grey siding with white trim for the exterior and one of my fave Mariner's Compass quilt blocks for decoration and a comment on my love of quilting. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I couldn't live under those conditions 😉

[gfweb]

22 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

This may have been taken from my balcony which is next to my kitchen window...

 

 

Thats a very nice tree,  not a mountain.

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

2 minutes ago, FauxPas said:

 

Nice! And it must be changing all the time through the seasons, varying weather, etc. 

 

When I moved here I was at the end of a dead end road, with a mile of trees between me and the river.  Forty years later the neighborhood is more built up.  Still it brings me joy to look out the window.  Thankfully the developers used good taste.  The mountain is a lava intrusion that remains mostly wooded.  The Princeton side of the mountain is a nature reservation.

 

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

9 minutes ago, gfweb said:

Thats a very nice tree,  not a mountain.

 

 

This is New Jersey.  The elevation is 300 ft.

 

[weinoo]

9 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

One thing that saves my sanity is the view of the mountain out of my kitchen window.

 

My sanity is just having a window in my kitchen - not all nyc apartments are so lucky.

[Shelby]

Gorgeous!!!  

[kayb]

@FauxPas -- lovely kitchen, super view! I'm a huge fan of white cabinets. Is that flooring ceramic tile, or distressed wood? I have the ceramic tile that looks like distressed wood, and I love it, though it's called a halt, mostly, to my running around barefoot, which I could do on my old hardwood.

 

May I ask your reasons for choosing laminate over granite or some other similar surface? I do love the way they look.

[FauxPas]

5 hours ago, kayb said:

@FauxPas -- lovely kitchen, super view! I'm a huge fan of white cabinets. Is that flooring ceramic tile, or distressed wood? I have the ceramic tile that looks like distressed wood, and I love it, though it's called a halt, mostly, to my running around barefoot, which I could do on my old hardwood.

 

May I ask your reasons for choosing laminate over granite or some other similar surface? I do love the way they look.

 

The flooring is a laminate and despite my initial concerns, it seems to be holding up really well. 

 

We chose the laminate countertop because of time, money and uncertainty over our future plans. I would have liked quartz but it really costs a lot more here and it would have taken longer to get installed. This is not a huge town and in-stock choices are limited and especially now there can be delays in delivery and installation. Laminate was more readily available and a quicker installation, plus much lower cost.

 

If we knew we were going to stay in the house for quite a while longer, I likely would have gone for the quartz and an undermount sink, but we never seem to stay in one place for very long. We are already considering selling and buying something a bit different though still in the same area. However, if we don't find something we like more than this house, I'm still happy enough with what we have here for a few more years. 😀

 

 

[patti]

 

 

We bought our home in 1992. The kitchen counters were orange Formica. I don’t recall much about the vinyl floors, except that they were ugly. The first update we did was just a facelift. Replaced vinyl with prettier vinyl and orange Formica with less ugly Formica. Painted the cabinets white and changed the hardware.

In my kitchen fantasies, I imagined knocking down a wall and expanding the kitchen. Many hours were spent thinking about my imaginary kitchen. Finally, in March of 2015, the dream started becoming reality.

 

First, the old kitchen, after intermediate facelift. No pics with the orange Formica. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rarely used breakfast nook. 

 

 

On the other side of the kitchen, a den that eventually became very depressing, with an oversized fireplace. (We’d started ripping out carpet when this pic was taken.) So much disrepair. I didn’t want to spend money on repairs because I wanted to spend it on the remodel. 
 

 

 

 

I tried to include pics of the empty space after demo, for perspective, but they wouldn’t show right side up. Tearing out the fireplace was a bigger job than anticipated!

 

The new (in 2015) kitchen and den. (Not including pics of the laundry room and powder room, which were part of the remodel.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pics were staged right after remodel was complete. It looks more lived in now and has things on the walls, and things on the counters. 😀 Might post some of those later. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 9, 2021 by patti (log)

[gfweb]

7 hours ago, patti said:

 

 

We bought our home in 1992. The kitchen counters were orange Formica. I don’t recall much about the vinyl floors, except that they were ugly. The first update we did was just a facelift. Replaced vinyl with prettier vinyl and orange Formica with less ugly Formica. Painted the cabinets white and changed the hardware.

In my kitchen fantasies, I imagined knocking down a wall and expanding the kitchen. Many hours were spent thinking about my imaginary kitchen. Finally, in March of 2015, the dream started becoming reality.

 

First, the old kitchen, after intermediate facelift. No pics with the orange Formica. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rarely used breakfast nook. 

 

 

On the other side of the kitchen, a den that eventually became very depressing, with an oversized fireplace. (We’d started ripping out carpet when this pic was taken.) So much disrepair. I didn’t want to spend money on repairs because I wanted to spend it on the remodel. 
 

 

 

 

I tried to include pics of the empty space after demo, for perspective, but they wouldn’t show right side up. Tearing out the fireplace was a bigger job than anticipated!

 

The new (in 2015) kitchen and den. (Not including pics of the laundry room and powder room, which were part of the remodel.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pics were staged right after remodel was complete. It looks more lived in now and has things on the walls, and things on the counters. 😀 Might post some of those later. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow!

Beautiful job. Just like on one of those TV shows where they'd get this done for half of what it costs in real life.

 

Edited March 9, 2021 by gfweb (log)

[blue_dolphin]

1 hour ago, gfweb said:

Wow!

Beautiful job. Just like on one of those TV shows where they'd get this done for half of what it costs in real life.

 

And in a small fraction of the time!

[Shelby]

I love your kitchen!!!!

[ElsieD]

@patti   That is one gorgeous kitchen!

[kayb]

I agree. Gorgeous kitchen. And it's big enough!

[chromedome]

Maybe I'll take a few photos of my apartment's kitchen at some point. Those of you who are currently suffering from "kitchen envy" will be greatly soothed.

[gfweb]

1 hour ago, chromedome said:

Maybe I'll take a few photos of my apartment's kitchen at some point. Those of you who are currently suffering from "kitchen envy" will be greatly soothed.

Is it like one of those Living in Alaska shows where the kitchen is a big bucket, a ladle and a piece of plywood?

[chromedome]

Not quite that bad, no.

 

I'm in a mid-60s vintage, on-a-budget building not unlike the base married quarters where I spent part of my childhood. It's basically a half-galley kitchen, except where the other half of the galley should be I have instead a blank wall filled with plumbing and electrical. There's about 20 inches of counter to the right of my sink, and a few more feet to the left, then an apartment-sized range at the end with another small hunk of countertop (and corresponding cupboard below) taking up the space between the range and the blank wall.

 

Fill in the blanks with ugly laminate countertop, vintage 60s cabinetry with many coats of landlord-grade paint on them, and cheap vinyl flooring.

[Anna N]

14 minutes ago, chromedome said:

Fill in the blanks with ugly laminate countertop, vintage 60s cabinetry with many coats of landlord-grade paint on them, and cheap vinyl flooring.

I can’t quite picture this. Could you supply a photo?

[weinoo]

14 hours ago, patti said:

The pics were staged right after remodel was complete. It looks more lived in now and has things on the walls, and things on the counters. 😀 Might post some of those later. 

Yay for the butcher block (I say that as a fan of butcher block).

[patti]

7 hours ago, gfweb said:

Wow!

Beautiful job. Just like on one of those TV shows where they'd get this done for half of what it costs in real life.

 

Thank you! If only we could’ve gotten it done for half of what it costs in real life!

 

I will say that I had some guilt about spending a lot of money, particularly because some of it was for aesthetic reasons. Did I deserve to have such a nice kitchen when many people have so little? Would having a pretty kitchen actually improve the quality of life? We’d managed with less, why did I think I needed more?

 

As you can see, I stifled the guilt and went ahead with it. I currently have no regrets. The pleasure in cooking in a kitchen with hugely improved functionality, while also being easy on the eyes, is tremendous! I appreciate all of the drawers, the counter space, and the storage. We use the heck out of the island. I had a plan to have it paid for relatively quickly and we succeeded. 
 

[chromedome]

13 minutes ago, Anna N said:

I can’t quite picture this. Could you supply a photo?

I don't have any current ones, but I took this before move-in:

 

 

 

 

The little space to the left of the stove now holds two small tubs with utensils in them, a bottle of olive oil and a bottle of vegetable oil, a mortar and pestle, and my salt pig and a terra cotta garlic storage pot. The space to the right of the stove now holds my cheapie induction hob, since the range has only one full-sized burner. The fridge has shifted one fridge-width to the right, and my portable dishwasher occupies the space where it used to be. My microwave lives on top of the dishwasher.

The shelves in the cupboards are of course fixed and only 9 inches high, so they won't accommodate most appliances or large pots. They're also quite high, with the bottom edge being five feet from the floor. On the plus side, that means I have lots of clearance between the countertop and the cupboards. The space above the cupboards is now filled with serving trays, Kitchenaid attachments and Cuisinart discs, currently-unneeded freezer packs, and various other detritus.

Working space between the sink and the induction hob is sufficient for a cutting board, a few ingredients and a bowl or some other container to accumulate the trim and suchlike. There is no under-cupboard lighting (though I could put in the stick-on kind) and no natural light. The builder-grade fixture you see is what I've got, and there's another in the small dining area behind where I stood when I took this shot. There's also no active ventilation, just a passive chimney-type flue which you can barely see in the ceiling over the stove.

[patti]

6 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

And in a small fraction of the time!

😆🤣😂

[FauxPas]

@patti, fabulous new kitchen! Thanks for sharing!