The transformation of the Casper Kitchen

I am so proud of Kyle! Long story, backing up…

Around the beginning of October of last year, we decided we were fed up with the design of our kitchen and laundry room.  Some ding dong designed the kitchen so the fridge is right up against a wall. I couldn’t open my French door fridge wide enough to stay open without having to pull a drawer open to prop it.  It was ghetto.  That was the first design flaw. The second, we have a cabinet I like to call the abyss.  Things go in and never come out.  True story! I think the previous owner even thought so since he left his fry daddy thingy back there when he moved out.  (Thanks for the housewarming gift, Kevin! J) The third major design flaw – our pantry was HUGE but completely inefficient.  To get to anything that wasn’t along the front of the shelf, you had to take everything out. The shelves were very deep, but had about 24 inches between each.  I don’t know about you, but how many things in your pantry need 24 inches of space.  Totally wasted.  We tried little wire racks, we tried multiple ways to organize, and it always ended in a tantrum (usually by me) “I CANNOT FIND ANYTHING IN THIS PANTRY! I HATE IT!!” Being the awesomely talented person he is, Kyle designed a plan. The plan was/is pretty extensive so it merits bullet points:

·         Demo the pantry. I hate that thing

·         Take down part of the wall between the kitchen and laundry

·         Move the laundry room door

·         Stack the washer and dryer

·         Plumb in the laundry room for new sink (which will also have the litter boxes under a cabinet! Hopefully our stupid cats will be able to find them… that’s another story)

·         Raise the ceiling in the part of the laundry room that had the pantry so it matches the ceiling in the kitchen

·         Look for the three tiny pieces of tile needed to patch the floor***

o   Could not find this! Apparently it was a pretty rare pattern. Had to replace the entire floor in the kitchen, laundry, and dining room. FANTASTIC

·         Install new can lights (not just over the new area, but also replace all the can lights in the kitchen.  Once again, whoever designed the kitchen also did some lazy electrical work.  They were burning out bulbs at least 1 per month. Insane!)

·         Build a new area of cabinets where the old pantry was

o   New cabinets include a book shelf for my cookbooks and a beverage fridge

o   Floor to ceiling pantry

o   Enclose the fridge and put a cabinet above it that can hold all the seasonal things that we don’t use every day

·         Take down all the upper cabinets, relocate them to the shed or garage, and custom build new cabinet boxes and doors. Some of the doors with glass panels

·         Remove the slate backsplash (that we installed the year before thinking we were just doing a face lift on the kitchen instead of a demo) and replace with glass subway tile

·         Keep lower cabinets intact but gut and re-purpose them. Add drawers and pull outs to make the abyss more functional and add upright storage! I had no place to put my cookie sheets… that needs to be design flaw 4…

·         Sand and refinish all lower cabinets and drawers from golden oak to a dark walnut

·         Finished!

Yeah that’s a long list. We know. The time frame for this very ambitious plan was a mere 5 months. We were to be finished by Valentine’s Day!   A wonderful little surprise came into our lives and taught us very quickly that as soon as we have a plan, everything gets tossed upside down! We found out November 16^th that we were going to be parents! Focus took a sharp shift into finishing enough of the kitchen so there was no longer a hole in the wall or ceiling and then we started working on the nursery.

All that being said – I would like to report that as of last night, the “temporary wire pantry” is now my crafting shelf. I am SO excited to have pantry drawers. I don’t even care that it will probably be doorless until next year.  The drawers are awesome and Kyle did such an amazing job.  This is why I am proud of him.  He’s knocking things off that list.  Love you buddy!

Here are several pictures of our Kitchen’s journey to greatness.  I would call it before and after, but ya know… Let’s say before and “in progress”! (I tried to make these pictures pretty, in order, and add captions... apparently google web albums decided to make things hard for me today...)