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Kitchen Chronicles is the right name for this blog post….because our kitchen has developed its own story during a 24 year journey with my family - not just the past two weeks of demolition and installation. Here’s my sweet Mother in our kitchen in 1990, just after we moved in.  As you can see, it had dark cabinets and butter yellow counter tops.  It’s such a shame that you can’t see the pebbled harvest gold linoleum - not really!

Shortly after we moved in, Will put primer on the cabinets to seal in the dark stain and then a nice fresh coat of white paint.  We changed the walls to a deep sage green and Will replaced the old linoleum with a new pattern, white with small black diamonds.  Then for my 40th birthday, Will gave me wood floors!  Who wants wood floors for her birthday?  Easy answer, me!

Our thought was that when the appliances started to die we would re-do this wall of our kitchen.  The microwave stopped working a couple of months ago and the dishwasher is on it’s last legs!  So we called Bob and Charles who we always call when we have a project and they put us in touch with Melanie, at Excelsior Kitchen in Butler, NJ.  She came to the house to get a feel for our look and style and to measure dimensions.  She came up with a great initial plan that we tweaked together.  Our kitchen is really on just two walls. The first wall is pictured above. The second wall, to the left of the first, holds the refrigerator and a larger cupboard that serves as the pantry.

Melanie introduced some nice visual interest to the first wall.  Pushing the sink out a few inches and placing a decorative hood over the stove broke the flat, monotenous lines of the old kitchen.  Varying the lines and forms of a room can make it look bigger and more pleasing to the eye.

We have a soffit above the cabinets.  That’s how kitchens were done back in the 70’s.  Melanie wanted to know if the cabinets could go all the way to the ceiling to gain some extra cabinet storage space.    We weren’t sure if the soffit was hollow, but I knew how to find out…YES!  

Box heaven…..view from the sunroom into the kitchen.

  Progress!!

This past Saturday morning, the painters came.

Because there’s so little kitchen wall to paint. We wanted it to be cheerful and perky!  Benjamin Moore’s Dill Pickle was just right!

So that’s where we are today….this week the stone counter top, electricity, and lighting will be installed. Then the ceramic tile backsplash will go up.  I’ll be sure to post more photos along the way!

If you have insights or helpful hints for someone thinking about re-doing their kitchen…please share!