Showing off

Finally! I can post pictures of what the kitchen actually looks like now!

I must thank SmittyDad, who came down on Monday and stayed until Tuesday, painted most of the kitchen himself Monday night, and without whom I'd still be painting today (if not tomorrow as well).

That out of the way, follow the jump for (at long last) the AFTER photos!


Well, the painting well pretty well. What with Dad's work on the walls Monday evening, we were finished with both ceiling and walls by 10 Tuesday morning and cleaning up. Looks nice if I do say so myself but I'll let you judge.
Amazing, huh? Ten days ago we had a fully functioning kitchen and a livable if messy house. Now we have a fully functioning kitchen and a completely trashed house. You wouldn't think I'd be happy about that.

But I am. Because as you see here, we at last have a real kitchen!Isn't it nice? Note the shiny black dishwasher. You can see the edge of the sink; it's a single-basin instead of a double-basin, which wasn't what we wanted, but the sink had to shrink to fit the corner cabinets in, and 28" double-basin sinks are only available at $500 and up. The current sink is the same thing I could buy at a plumbing supply store for $498, same brand and everything, only I bought it at Home Depot for $99. Like the little jug lamp in the corner? It's pretty cool. Note the top corner cabinet; tons of room in there that didn't used to exist in the old cabinets. It's wonderful. The walls really look blue in this picture, don't they?

And check out the handiwork up above. Remember how crappy this looked before? Couple coats of flat ceiling paint and that looks pretty sweet, eh? Well, it was more than paint. I had to mud and tape the area multiple times to get it nice and smooth, and even then I can tell where I worked. But that's me; you may not immediately see it since you haven't had to stare at it every day for three years. Note the color of the wall paint here. Same paint, different lighting. It's a pretty cool color.

This is the fridge corner. Remember how much wasted space there used to be next to the fridge? Two feet or more, right? Now it's about 11 inches, just room enough for a step-stool, or a 10.2" cabinet from Wal-Mart, or something. The cabinets above the fridge, like similar cabinets in every kitchen, aren't much good. A step-stool would help and I know where I can get one, so that may be purchased this week. Right now it has a coffeemaker in it. I don't drink coffee. If you do drink coffee and would like to stop, I suggest putting your coffeemaker in your own above-the-fridge cabinets, since you'll never bother to take it down.

I like this one. This is the bakers rack we bought to replace the crappy old shelving. I guess I should stop saying it's crappy since we want to sell the shelves... actually we're going to give them away. Obviously it's not loaded yet, but check out the wine storage at the bottom! And hooks to hang frying pans and barbecue grill cleaners from! I like it. It's a definite improvement. Look at how light grey the wall looks. Same paint.

But where will the food that used to be on the shelves go? Well, we're going to be moving in a small stand-alone pantry with a couple shelves in it for some things. But check this out. You know how there was that useless corner cabinet beside the stove I complained about earlier? Ta-daa! A lazy susan! That is why we had to move the sink down a couple inches (and the dishwasher etc), but for that much extra storage space? Yeah, it's worth it. Well worth it. I wonder what the weight limit is on one of those things? This picture also shows the tile pretty well.

So there you have it! We'll be making other changes as time goes on, and of course I have this week to move things around and make the house truly livable again so we can move back in this weekend. We bought all sorts of organization things to increase storage space in the kitchen, so hopefully there won't be junk lying around all the time. And I haven't even shown you the brand-new door we made for the laundry area! Yep, all kinds of cool things to see and do here in Smitty's World. If you feel like stopping by, the weather's pretty nice in Tampa in the winter...
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