We Bought a Farm: Kitchen Improvement

This farm house is ... so ... quirky.

At first glance, when people walk in, they immediately comment on how beautiful our home is. 

And it is.

But as they walk around, I watch as they say, "Why is that there? Why do you think they put that there? Why did they do that? Why don't they have one of those?" 

Honestly, it feels like these people just built room by room and sort of "winged it" as they went -- adding things and making decisions as they went along. There are french doors on my closet. There is a water heater in my closet. There are doorways that are too narrows. There are porches that go to nowhere. My bathroom is massive. My laundry room is tiny. There is not a single closet downstairs for coats or boots. And we live on a muddy farm!

You get the idea.

Another example?

The kitchen.

At first glance, our kitchen seems fine. No major issues. But when you get in it and try to cook in it (of which I am doing a lot more), you are immediately effected by small nuances that can bother you. 

A big one in the kitchen is the island. It is long and seems wonderful. But only when you really try to move within the confines of this room are you aware how much it blocks your path from the stove to the sink. This is sort of a big deal when you are cooking. You are constantly walking around this island. 

Here are a few pictures of the kitchen before we moved in:

Because of the way the kitchen is set up, it is seriously lacking in counter space. We know we want to redo our kitchen sometime in the next few years so I don't want to do anything major to it right now. But we need it to work for us at present, and the lack of counter space was resulting in it not working for us.

The major problem was all our fruits and vegetables. (Especially in this community where people are bringing you extra produce all ... the ... time!) Where do we put them? We ended up putting them on the island. However that meant that we didn't have anywhere to prep meals.

The other day I got so frustrated and started really trying to brainstorm. What I could do ... for free ... to give myself more room? I asked my father-in-law if we could put a shelf up in front of the window. He thought we could. But that would take time and possibly cost money.

But then it came to me. My in-laws had an old table in the garage. Maybe I could use that to hold our fruits and vegetables?

I set it up, and it worked brilliantly!

I am so happy with how much space this created. Yes, I admit, getting into the long cabinet to the right of this table is a little difficult. But my mother and mother-in-law helped me move stuff around so that the things in that cabinet are not of vital significance.

Now, if we can just get our oven fixed, our dishwasher fixed, and make the cabinets not so narrow and deep, we'll really be on the right track!