So often, you look at a house and one of the most important spaces that should meet your needs, is the kitchen.
Enough storage? Ample workspace? Does it flow well?
For me; I needed storage and an oven.
I am a simple girl. Which was good because our kitchen needed some love that we just did not have funds for.
Winters were freezing in here! You can see the radiators ran under the cabinets, along the bottoms… The heat went into the cabinets, not the kitchen. Every time I opened the spice cabinet (which has the most fun surprise!), I would be slapped with a cold wind!
We found out days after moving in, why the wood was screwed into the ceiling. There was a leak in connector to the feed for the shower above, which rained on me while I did dishes and The Garden Guy was in the shower! It was a quick fix, but the ceiling remained in its terrible appearance until 2017!
Before we get to that though, we need to talk about contentment.
Being able to find joy, in the simplicity of the day to day. Having a fancy kitchen, would have been dreamy! But we had to save and plan. A kitchen reno was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, so we had to get it just right.
In the meantime, you just deal. You give thanks for having appliances that work, a way to cook meals for your family, and ignore the rest. It takes practice and patience, but it is so worth it.
Ok, fast forward to the fall of 2014. The sweet little one we moved in with, is a big brother times two! The youngest came along in June and I’m cleaning the double oven in preparation for Thanksgiving. My absolute favorite holiday! I put my 24 inch double wall oven to the test, cooking a feast to feed an army. It is my love language.
My right hand starts to tingle when I lift the heating element to run the sponge under it… Then my left hand feels heat. The oven is off! But I’m feeling electric current. Not good. Upon further investigation, the heating element has burned a hole through the bottom of them upper oven. We immediately shut it off at the panel. After a little research we knew we needed to get the serial number to the current oven which was hidden behind a wooden panel built over the oven. Carefully we wiggled the oven out, got what we needed and started to slide it back into place….. Crack! The tempered glass of the lower oven door, shatters.
What’s a girl to do? Well, she cleans it all up and uses white duck tape on a trash bag to keep the five month old away from the hole.
I cooked Thanksgiving in crock pots, and left the research on a new oven to the guy who’s good at finding a deal; my husband.
He snags a great deal on a 36 inch double wall oven, from KitchenAid on a black Friday deal.
Being in the holiday season, finding someone who could squeeze in a cabinet build was hard!
But we found Bill. He is the kindest, hardworking man, I’ve known in a long time. Willing to drive an hour to us, he works out a cabinet sketch for us that was the beginning of our new kitchen. The plan was to build a new kitchen around that oven cabinet.
He was able to get the new one built and brought over right before New Year’s Eve.
Seeing the avocado green on the wall behind the oven, was actually a fun discovery!
New oven, new cabinet, and the kitchen was back up and running….. Until a fateful day in May of 2016.
The kitchen is slowly, yet rapidly, falling apart. Stay tuned!
OurQueenAnneBeauty 