MUST HAVE Vintage Signs

Ever since I was a little girl and I dug an old, discarded Sunbeam Bread tin sign from a junk pile, I have loved retro signs. Since I renovated my kitchen last year, I have been slowly collecting and adding them to my kitchen walls. I wish they weren’t so durn expensive, and I could kick myself for listening to my parents telling me to toss that old Sunbeam sign… because my walls are still as bare as ever!

Here are a few of my favorites that are currently on my wish list… when I can afford them.

Just the right amount of sass and frass.

My Cooking Area

For the past 20 years or so, I have POURED through home magazines, preparing for my own Great Big Kitchen Renovation. I’d read that dividing your kitchen into “zones” was the best way to organize. I agree.

When I planned the kitchen, I decided to create zones: a cooking/baking zone, a beverage/snack area, a washing zone, a pantry/storage zone. I also wanted the kitchen to be THE KITCHEN. That is, I wanted it to be a place for cooking and storing food-related stuff, not the place where we wash our paint brushes, where the teens remove blackheads, where we store medicines, etc. That’s for the BATHROOM or UTILITY AREA. I’m fussy about the kitchen. I want it to be a really nice room, not a utility room akin to the garage.

I present to you one of my newest zones: the cooking area! Oh, we love this little nook!

I actually have a stove range hood now, too! Woohoo!

We’re really still organizing things and finding the perfect places for things yet. It’s a long process; I expect our needs will evolve over time. It would help if we would finish the kitchen, too! There are a lot of small things to do yet– I must create shelves for a nook, finish a storage bench, and install trash pull-out bins. Lots and lots to do…. but it’s so thrilling to see the kitchen finally take shape after all this work!

Only One More Month???

Egads. I knew renovating the kitchen would be tough. I remain in shock at just HOW tough it’s been. Still, we’ve waited SO LONG for this moment, so I am grateful it’s finally coming to pass.

Since we have completely gutted the room, the opportunities abound. Of course, there are limitations to some of my decisions. For example, I can only place the stove along one side of the wall, if I want a range hood ducted to the outside. I don’t like having the stove there, but I really have no choice, unless I want to do extensive framing and ductwork (which I do not).

And all the while I plan and prepare and order supplies and demolish and rebuild and plan some more, I have to run the household, pay the bills, work my jobs, and still find time to work in the miscellaneous stuff like researching life insurance quotes online and calling the power company to ensure we have enough gas pressure to add some space heaters…

It’s a LOT if work. A LOT!! I am amazed at how much work this is. Wow.

But I cannot wait to have a dishwasher. I can’t WAIT to have REAL ceiling lights, a big window, new cabinets and counters, new flooring! To have INSULATED and clean walls!!!! Oh I will be so happy. Here’s praying we get this all done in one more month. I don’t know if I can last much longer beyond that, lol….

Handy Ideas for a Remodeled Kitchen

Since we are renovating the kitchen and dining room (we’ve completely gutted the rooms down to the studs and subflooring), I have the opportunity to build a new one from scratch. Of course, I am restricted by a few things: we have only one exterior wall, so the stove must go against that wall if I want to have a range hood venting outside; I will have a space heater on another wall, so the fridge cannot be in that vicinity; etc. It’s taken a good deal of planning to make sure that everything will be *finally* efficient and economical, like car insurance haha. I wish I could spend more time planning it, actually. There is just SO MUCH to plan all at once, but I just can’t have the walls gutted forever. I’m “winging it” here, hoping that the decisions I’m making are both affordable and will work to make the kitchen MORE pleasant and efficient, and not less.

Anyway, one thing we are working toward is a “beverage center.” The kids love their teas, and we adults love our coffees…. and it was kind of cramped in the Old Kitchen to try to cook and move around in the kitchen when people were in the corner, making tea or coffee. So I decided to separate the area away from the main cooking area. And to emphasize the separation, I am going to be installing a small refrigerator in the beverage area, too. This will hold the creamers, the snack items, the orange juice, etc. The fridge will take up valuable cabinet space, to be sure, but I think it will enhance the flow of the kitchen– so it’s worth it, in my estimation. I’ve seen those drawer fridge thingies, but they are twice as expensive. I’m going to try to put this new compact fridge up on a shelf, next to the wall cabinets. This will make it so that I do not have to bend over to get things (which is a problem right now with the current refrigerator). I would just LOVE to get a refrigerator without a freezer at all– those freezer on the top /fridge on the bottom models are a royal pain. I have to get on my hands and knees to get to the food in the fridge. Unfortunately, the no-freezer refrigerators are very pricey. So it will have to wait.

Another idea I’m coming up with is ceiling fans for lighting. Lots of modern kitchens have fluorescent lighting or recessed lighting. I dislike recessed lighting, because they generate so much heat for so little light (comparatively– after all, recessed lighting is a CAN of light inserted into a hole in the ceiling!). I like a LOT of light, so recessed is not for me. I am opting for ceiling fans with lights. This will help keep the kitchen cooler in the summer (the late afternoon sun blasts into the kitchen during the summer) and warmer throughout the house in the winter; we will have a small gas heater unit in the kitchen, and the fans will help to circulate the heat throughout the room and the house.

So it really pays to try to think ahead. I’m sure there are many more things I am missing. My dread is that I will complete the kitchen, and then have lots of “Oh no! I should have done this!” :S

A Good Kitchen…

… is everything to a cook. Really. I have had some really, really bad kitchens. Most of my apartment kitchens either had no countertops, or had a tiny one of 3 feet long. I can’t believe I was living in an apartment with FOUR young children and using a kitchen with a 3-foot countertops and two cupboards. Wow, lol.

Well, we’re redoing our kitchen in our home, at last. And while it’s SO GREAT to be finally renovating the kitchen, it’s very hard to be living here without a kitchen while doing it. We have no kitchen sink. We have no storage space in the house (the basement floods and there is no attic in the house)… it’s surprisingly tough. I’m a pretty tough gal, I can take a lot, so I thought. But having no kitchen is really, really disruptive. And it’s not disruptive just for cooking– it’s hard emotionally on the family. Basic stuff like morning coffee or dinner together is totally turned on its head. Wow. I thought I was prepared for this, knowing how renovations can cause stress, but this is pretty wild! Even my blogging is severely affected– my posts are more terse, less humorous, less frequent.

Still, I’m so happy to finally be getting this done. All this demolition and construction work is quite the abs workout!! Once the plumbing is in and the electricity is in, and the first floor is insulated, all the hard stuff is done. All that will be left is the upstairs– the simple stuff like walls and floors. Whew. I can’t wait til it’s all over.

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