Kitchen face-lift {part two} - The Can of Worms that keeps on giving

So do you remember me talking about home improvement projects really just being a can of worms just waiting to be opened?  If not, see “Part One” here.

Well, as the old, weird and actually quite disturbing song from my childhood goes,

The worms crawl in,

The worms crawl out,

The worms play pinochle on your snout…

Needless to say, our project now exceeds the term “face-lift.”  And yet, I’m not sure what else to call it.  Kitchen rehabilitation?  Ridiculous kitchen project?  The kitchen project that never ends???

And a busier season of work for Mike (no complaining here!) and school plus extra-curricular activities for the kids has left us with little time to work on the project.  But we have made some progress.  Just not all of it is in areas that we expected.

So far, we have removed the wood paneling and the fluorescent lights from the ceiling and installed can lights.

  

We have painted our eating area… with a little help.

We have also scraped all the popcorn texture off the ceiling in the hallway.

 

All of these items were totally on our list of things to accomplish.

However our attention from this part of the project got diverted when I convinced Mike that it was okay to hire out the drywall and texture work.  As we talked through what all we would hire someone to do that phrase that strikes fear into any home improvement project participant came up, “Well, if we’re doing that, doesn’t it make sense to go ahead and do this while we’re at it?”

You see, we have these cabinets in the hallway that we use as a secondary pantry and mostly some random storage.  The cabinets, however, are not all that useful since they are far too deep (deeper than arm-length) for anyone to be able to find the things that inevitably get shoved to the back.

And the pantry in our kitchen is really not terribly functional.  The shelves are very shallow and not tall enough to fit much of anything.  It has always been a jumbled mess because nothing fits.

For a couple of years now we have talked about tearing out the hallway cabinets and making it into a step-in pantry and getting rid of the useless one in the kitchen.

Picture it with me:

We are standing in the kitchen late one night after the kids are in bed and we’re talking through what we are doing.  Finally Mike says, “Well, if we’re going to pay someone to come in and do the texture on the walls anyway, then doesn’t it make sense to go ahead and build out that pantry in the hallway like we’ve talked about for years since I’ll have to put in a new door and some new drywall around it?”

“Well,” I said, “it certainly doesn’t make sense to go and do all of this only to tear it back up later to do another project.”

And so, the pantry project was born.

   

At this writing we’ve actually finished with converting those hallway cabinets into a step-in pantry that also includes a place for my big KitchenAid stand mixer to be stored on a rolling cart.  All that’s left is to install the door (with contact light switch – awesome!), one more piece of drywall and the floor.

Now that everything from the old pantry is moved over to the new one, we will tear it out and begin prepping that space for some display shelves for cookbooks and a sort-of kitchen office area.  I’m having to design this part from scratch because I can find no pictures or anything like what I imagine in this space.

The drawing will probably not make a whole lot of sense right now, but those are built in shelves to the right (for cookbooks and a small storage space for kitchen office and computer things), a flat screen tv in the middle and open shelves to the left for some decorative / display items.  This is just a concept right now, so I’d love any feedback you have on the design.

Now, if you look back at my first post, there was a list of what would go and what had to stay.  I have mentioned several things in this post that were totally on our list and a few additions to the list.

But, you know how I said that the floor had to stay?  Remember how I said that there was no way that my husband was going to let me replace it right now?  Well, first think of all the twists and turns this project has taken so far and then let me just leave you with three words:

Can. Of. Worms.