Kris in MI and anyone else who loves their kitchen...

[mom25kiddles]

Would you mind posting pictures of your kitchen, root cellar, pantry, special features, etc... anything that you love about your kitchen and food storage areas? We purchased our new place in Northern Idaho, finally, and the house is very unfinished... so much so that I am able to design my kitchen and pantry areas for the most part. In our current home, my kitchen is how we bought it and I've made do just fine but I love the idea of having things *my way*. My problem is I'm not sure what *my way* is... I have no creative vision for things like this and need ideas to help give me vision!!! I spend an extreme amount of time in the kitchen as we cook from scratch 99.9% of the time, preserve quite a bit, mill our grains, cheese/butter making, etc... and we store approximately 6-9 months of grains/legumes/etc. Currently, that storage is 3 floors down from my kitchen, which is on the top (3rd) floor of my house!!! Bad design, awesome views... but looking forward to Idaho!!!

Or, if you dislike or make do with the kitchen/pantry/etc you are in now and have great ideas about what you would love, please share your dream kitchen plans!!!



Thanks ~
Carmen

[Kris in MI]

Oooh, I'd love to post pictures of my kitchen, pantry, cellar (especially now that dh has finally made a set of shelves for it and I am no longer using old stair treads and cement blocks that I scrounged!!). Will try to do that this weekend; but always need assistance getting the pics off the camera and into the computer, then from the computer to the internet. I'm rather a 'low technology' gal.

Pantry's a bit low at the moment, but at least you'll be able to see the construction better.

[lovinthislife]

We've redone our whole house. But, I need to warn you that we are very frugal and my hubby is a bit of a jack of all trades type. He has reused nails, boards, walls, etc. We have a home that was once a trailer with an add on on each side. The kitchen we moved to the back add on to make it bigger. We bought an antique sink. One of those white cast iron things with drain boards on both sides. I am disabled and have trouble with my back and legs. I can't stand for very long at a time. One thing hubby did for my kitchen was to lift up my dish washer. He built a stand for it. It's about 12-14 inches off the floor. He built a plywood frame of a thing to go over the sides that were above the sink and over it. This looks funny but oh my it helps my back. My aunt has the same things wrong with her and she loves it, she said if she gets a new washer, she'll do the same thing. You don't have to bend over so to load or unload the dishwasher.

[firegirl969]

Welcome lovinthislife! Your DH sounds like a super guy. Glad that you decided to join us!

[mom25kiddles]

Thanks so much, Kris!! I'm fairly *low tech* myself so I completely understand!!! Looking forward to your pictures!!

Lovinthislife ~ Your kitchen sounds wonderful, as does your husband!!! We are frugal, by nature and by circumstance, so your description of how your kitchen was designed and remodeled is great!!! Our new *home* was built initially as a steel sided pole barn... it's ugly, but it's built like a tank, large enough for our growing family, on beautiful land and affordable. The potential is fantastic and we plan to try our hand at being as ingenious with recycled materials as your husband was!!!

Carmen

[Timberline]

My kitchen is pretty standard. I do have a nice amount of cabinet and counter space. Dh let me turn the whole back part of our basement into a pantry/storage area, it's about 12x30. Very nice, but this is a recent, on-going project, so no finished pics to share yet.

This is the heart and soul of my kitchen/dining area. The stove directly faces the kitchen, just a few steps away. I do have an electric stove in the kitchen. I never turn it on in the winter months. We do all our cooking and baking with this one, and it heats our 2000 sq ft with no trouble in the winter. I would give up all my other appliances before I'd give up my wonderful stove!

[Callieslamb]

Put the sink near the stove! I have to walk across my kitchen all the time - cutting and rinsing here and cooking there!

My favorite kitchen had drawers under the counter rather than cupboards. So much easier to store things in!

[Fae]

WIHH, I would love to have the directions for the colander light fixture in your kitchen. My kitchen is being remodeled and I have always wanted one of those. I have cabinets sitting everywhere waiting for my DS to get time to put them in. I still have some of the old base cabinets in because I have to have some work space. When we get through I will try to learn how to post pictures and show it off. My original cabinets were stained green and after many years I painted them an cream color. I am putting in kitchenmaid cabinets that are called Moss with Mocha Glaze. They are beautiful and I am getting impatient to get them up but hopefully in two weeks.

[mom25kiddles]

Wonderful kitchens!!! Thanks for the link, WIHH!! Roger and I are getting some great ideas from the pictures!! I would love to see new pictures of any of the *works in progress* now almost 9 months later... or, if it's like things around our house, the pictures may still be the same depending on what's been going on!!!!

Carmen

[Kris in MI]

Sorry for the huge pictures!

view enterring my kitchen


double wall oven, the 'cooling counter', and fridge


pantry, with doors open to show shelves (we bought the pantry framework, built the shelves out of pine boards)


fridge & 5 burner cooktop (w/pot of chickpeas cooking for hummus)


cellar shelf w/relishes, syrups & veggies


cellar shelf w/jams & fruits

[Macybaby]

Don't mind the mess. . . DH and I have been doing major work on our house for 5 years, and we are down to some finishing in the bathroom and the kitchen. We had to relocate the kitchen at the start of all this so have been living with a temporary kitchen setup all this time. The good part is I've had lots of time to see what I like and don't like, and have actually changed the layout a few times already. I really like what I have now- which is good as we plan on making cabinets this winter.

One thing that I really love is my lazy susan.


The old kitchen had this in the corner and we took it out and DH made a round top for it and we've used it as a temporary island (to see if we liked having an island). As it turns out we are going to have a small island near the fridge and a much bigger island/table area at the end.

Using the lazy susan like this works great. I have all my stables in there, and when I am mixing something up, all I have to do is turn the susan to get at the item I want (oil, flour, sugar . . .) pull up the container, measure out what I want and put the container away without taking a step.

Since it is not actually in a corner, I won't need to have the "corner" part missing from the susan when I get the real cabinest set up. That will give me more room to put even more baking supplies (the smaller container stuff). I'm also going to put in drawer so I can have all my measuring and mixing utensiles there too. And the big area will have a nice stone slab for rolling dough.

I think I may have finally settled on the cooktop/oven but I'm not quite sure. Will have to make up my mind soon!

BTW - this is what I currently have for cooking.

Yup - decided my kitchen was too wide so I moved the wall. Now that DH is home he says it does work better, but he is sure looking forward to having a finished kitchen. Good thing as he has to do a lot of the work.



I also have a summer kitchen in my garden shed. That is where I do the bulk of my canning and food processing (including rabbits and deer). I simply could not get all I wanted in one kitchen so I solved several problems by having a second one.

Cathy

[FarmersDaughter]

I don't have pictures yet, but we are almost finished gutting and remodeling our house. Some things that I love about my kitchen:

1. We put an extra sink in. It's smaller than our normal sink and sits nearer to the stove. It's a "prep" sink. Great for washing off veggies, etc. while cooking...especially if the other sink has dishes in it.

2. Lots of counter space! DH and I enjoy cooking together, so we have enough counter space that we can each have our own area to prepare foods.

3. We are getting ready to install our pot-filler faucet. It's a faucet that rests against the wall behind your stove, but is on hinges and pulls out to fill large pots while they sit on the stove-top. This will be great for filling large pots (especially during canning time) and not having to carry them to the sink.

What I wish we could do, but don't have the space: a much larger pantry! We have a decent sized one, but I'd love a larger one.

Enjoy designing your kitchen. It's great to be able to start from scratch.

[FarmersDaughter]

One more tip that I forgot to add. I love to watch This Old House and I've noticed that when they design kitchens they tape together cardboard in the size of the fridge, stove, cabinets, etc. Then they can move it around to try different configurations to see what works best. I think this is a great idea. Sometimes what we think will work in our imagination, doesn't quite work well in reality. A lot easier to move cardboard and get it right than to get everything installed and realize that the "flow" of the kitchen is off.

[Macybaby]

If you want to get lots of ideas for things you never knew existed, go to gardenweb.com , to the Home Forum and the Kitchen subforum.

Kitchen Forum

Now lots of those folks have money and fancy kitchens, but they also talk a lot about neat features and they are use to designing a kitchen to fit, not fitting into an existing kitchen.

The idea of laying out my kitchen to fit ME was a bit foreing to me. When we had our house built in WI, we didn't worry too much about stuff like that as it was the first time that we would have a situation that we had a say in the kitchen layout. Usually the kitchen is there and you figure out how to make it work.

I thought I was "OK" with my planned kitchen until I stumbled on that site and started getting all kinds of ideas. Now I'll have a kitchen that I'll love cooking in, not just one that is functional. That does come at a price - I thought I would be fine with my 5 year old electric range, not I can't live without an induction cooktop and a wall oven (that has a lowest temp setting of 125 deg F)!!

At least I'm still happy with my Fridge.

I keep the bulk of my canned goods down in the old cellar part of the basement. I will have two pantry closets in the kitchen along with lots of storage.

[Ravenlost]

I think my two most favorite things about my kitchen is the built in cookbook shelf above the stove and the dish drain carved into the solid surface countertop next to the sink.

Here's a shot of the kitchen:

[7thswan]

Chalk Creek, Please tell me what kind of stove that is. It is Beautiful.

[hotzcatz]

Set up your kitchen so you can easily make the biggest meal of the year, this is typically a traditional Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Then set it up so you can easily do a typical day's kitchen work. What ever it takes to easily make the largest meal of the year will be the perfect layout of "areas" such as "food prep", "mixing", "cooking", etc. Each of these areas consists of such things as counter tops, storage, sinks, appliances, etc. but at the beginning just labeling them "areas" keeps it easier to see how food flows through your kitchen. For your particular kitchen you may want to factor in a day of grain grinding or canning as well as the largest meal of the year and the day to day setup.

Look at the flow patterns of how food and utensils move through your kitchen. Frequently it will be raw foods from storage and refrigeration to the sink and then food prep area. Usually then on to the stove/oven and then onto plates and to the table. (Or in front of the TV half the time.) There are then dirty dishes which continue the return "flow" as well as the rest of the kitchen clean up. Some kitchens have multiple sink areas such as a sink for food prep and a sink for dish cleaning. Some kitchens have multiple cooking areas, yours may want multiple food prep areas. Perhaps a baking area separate which includes the grain grinder.

Make a list of all the "areas" you need in your kitchen. Show them as a roundish shape and start laying them out on a piece of paper. Arrows showing which way the food moves can be helpful. Once you have the rough areas figured out, then start adding in smaller details. After all this is done, then details like specific appliances and decoration can be factored in. Start with the big general areas, then start filling in details, otherwise it can get really confusing.

[wyld thang]

I always loved Laura Ingalls WIlder's description of the pantry Almanzo built for her(and then she burned the house down...) I think it's in The FIrst FOur Years.

[Cabin Fever]

Originally Posted by Fae

WIHH, I would love to have the directions for the colander light fixture in your kitchen. My kitchen is being remodeled and I have always wanted one of those.....

Bear with me, it has been six years since I made that light fixture. The first thing you have to do is grind the porcelan (enamel?) off where you plan ro drill the hole thru the bottom of the colander. I used a Dremel tool with a diamond or carbide grinder bit.

The hardware I used for the fixture I purchased from an internet light fixture/lamp making company. I don't remember the name of the company, you'll have to "google" to find one...there are several out there.

I bought the brass gooseneck pipe, the brass wall plate, and a ceramic light bulb holder. All these pieces are standard size and screw together. You'll have to buy two brass nuts to hold one end of the gooseneck to the brass plate and the other end to the colander. Both ends of the gooseneck are threaded for a nut.

Before you attach the light bulb holder, you have to run its wires thru the goose neck pipe. Then attach the holder to the threads left on the end of the pipe. Its all kinda self-explanatory once you have all the pieces in front of you.

Let me know if you have any questions.

[whodunit]

Originally Posted by Chalk Creek

My kitchen is pretty standard. I do have a nice amount of cabinet and counter space. Dh let me turn the whole back part of our basement into a pantry/storage area, it's about 12x30. Very nice, but this is a recent, on-going project, so no finished pics to share yet.

This is the heart and soul of my kitchen/dining area. The stove directly faces the kitchen, just a few steps away. I do have an electric stove in the kitchen. I never turn it on in the winter months. We do all our cooking and baking with this one, and it heats our 2000 sq ft with no trouble in the winter. I would give up all my other appliances before I'd give up my wonderful stove!

Would you mind telling us more about your wood cookstove?

What brand is it?

Never seen a cookstove where one could also enjoy seeing the fire.
trying not to drool over here

Twas raised using a wood cookstove, got it sitting out in my garage right now.

~Mrs Whodunit