Operation Kitchen

Everybody who knows me knows that I hate our kitchen. Caleb and I love to cook, and I mean, love to cook. We're what you might call "foodies." Unfortunately, our kitchen is not a foodie's kitchen. It's more like a "college student who lives off of ramen noodles" kitchen.

The counters and cabinets are all made of matching off-white melamine, which Jenny just informed me is the poisonous substance in Chinese kitty food.

The counter space is minimal, at best, and made worse by the fact that there is a long window in the middle of it that means one counter only comes up to a tall person's knees.

The sink is one bowl, and it has this crazy trash trap in it that harbors all kinds of liquid and bacteria and begins to stink if not cleaned regularly.

And there's more, but I won't bore you with the details.

I love the rest of the house, but the kitchen drives me crazy, and for the next few years (at least), a remodel is not anywhere near our budget. So in an effort to make our kitchen more livable, we're slowly taking on little projects.

For a Christmas gift this year, both sets of our parents donated towards our kitchen project, so this week, we tore out some of our old cabinets and installed open shelves. Besides being ugly, these cabinets were located in a deep corner, and it was nearly impossible to access 90% of the space in them. Because they were so hard to reach, they had turned into a nasty catch-all where we threw dishes in whichever spot we could reach at the time.

Here is a picture of our cabinets in a different corner. You can see how ugly and sterile the doors are.

Here is a picture of the cabinets we tore out. Caleb had already removed the doors, but you can see how mish-mash the clutter was in them.

And here is a picture of our new open shelves. They are organized and lovely. Hopefully, they will stay that way.