The Kitchen- part two

I had a lot of 'splainin' to do because my contractor had never installed a pot-filler before (and he swears he had never seen one in a house). A pot filler is a faucet that you add close to your stove, so that you do not have to do a lot of heavy lifting of water from the sink to the stove. When I started shopping around, they were pricing at around $200 to $1500. One rainy afternoon, I looked on Amazon.com, and found this one. It is now over $900, but for some strange reason (and apparently a pricing mistake on their end), it was listed for $132. So that is how much I paid for my pot-filler.

My cabinets are good old 'Lidingo' cabinets from IKEA. A little while ago, I was skeptical about using IKEA cabinets, until I read an article on Consumer Reports that ranked IKEA cabinets highest in the basic brand, and even better than several mid-level brands. I knew I wanted white cabinets, and IKEA has three different versions. I went with Lindingo because of the style of the glass pane (it was not frosted), and because the lines are clean, but not ultra-modern.

There were two things that blew my budget in this renovation - even though I did manage to recoup the costs in other kitchen savings. One of them was this fun microwave. It is a microwave drawer and fit perfectly in the top part of a 24 inch cabinet. Aside from it being a perfect fit, it is a convection microwave oven and has so many great features that I cannot list them all. 

My love affair with the Bosch started when my friend Jess told me about the birthday gift that she received from her husband. A BOSCH DISHWASHER- and how great it was. Now, I love this dishwasher. It is an ultra, ultra quiet, but very efficient. My German husband says- well, what do you expect- it is GERMAN ENGINEERING!

One thing we did not realize immediately was that this dishwasher needs a rinse-aid to dry the dishes. Once we figured that out we were very happy. It is very quiet, cleans great and is very energy efficient.



More to come- the faucet, the countertops and the wine cooler. And what is left to be done?

The kitchen before

Here are a few pictures of the kitchen before the renovation. It was actually an almost-new kitchen, but a really badly planned one, and one that was not practical for us. Everything was cramped, you would open one cabinet and end up bumping into the wall. The backsplash was to ummmm... yeah- backsplash. 

The flooring was interesting. There was a layer of laminate, over a layer of vinyl that had been put down with some black goo-ey glue, over original hardwood floors. Getting that taken care of was DRAMA- and I will post about it later.

There was an opening into a 'pantry' that we ended closing off to get more cabinet space. And my not-so-favorite this was the popcorn ceiling.

The kitchen was galley-style and small compared to the rest of the house. I love a space to entertain, and so we opened everything up and created a kitchen dining combo.


Enough about the old kitchen, this week I was at a random tile clearance store in Virginia, and was able to score some white carrara marble subway tile for the backsplash. 137 square feet- my contractor says it will be enough- for 50 bucks. SCORE!!!!!!