Join me for a tour of our new kitchen
Welcome to our little house out in the country. L.E. Fant, our gorgeous little greeter, is here to welcome you for a little tour of the kitchen.



And please note that we're going through the kitchen door. Because that's the kind of guests you are. No formal front door stuff around here. I'd put on the kettle if we had a stove. The kitchen door is very informal at this moment.


Because, uh, I broke the lock on the front door. The key wouldn't turn and I was afraid I was going to break the key and I pushed a little harder and the lock just spun. My dear husband didn't seem to believe me until he had the same trouble with the kitchen door, except he just went ahead and broke the key off in the lock. That worked just about as well as my take on the locks.

We contemplated the relative costs of breaking in versus calling a locksmith and as you can see my husband chose the former option.

The kitchen is the one room in the house that I wasn't too sure about it. It is small. Very small. The children will not be able to stand on their step stool to watch what is going on at the stove anymore. I will not have much room to move around.

But the room is growing on me. The cabinets are nice. I will actually have more counter space. There are lots of outlets for things like electric roasters and juicers and toasters. Oh, and the electric stand mixer I've had my eye on for years. And the space that is there is used more efficiently than in our current kitchen.

Just look at the pantry.

Surfing around to see how other people deal with small galley style kitchens, I came across some famous chef who designed his own super efficient galley kitchen and he had a cool pantry with shelves that slid out. I thought that was way cool and a great investment for my super small kitchen. It might make the whole small kitchen thing worthwhile, I thought, as I pondered a bit of remodeling just for the fun of it rather than because it actually had to be done.

But what should I find when I actually looked in my pantry?


Shelves that pull out! One of the cabinets has shelves like that, too. How cool is that?

And see, if you were really dropping in for a visit, I picture you sliding onto one of these little built in benches while I served you a cup of tea on the little table I have not yet found to put in front of the little built in benches. It seems like such a nice, neighborly, just-popped-in kind of place to sit and chat.


I think this will also make up a little for the fact the children won't be able to help with the cooking as much. Here, they can measure and mix and beat all at their level and without the step stool. And the seats lift up for storage. No idea what to store in a bench in the kitchen, but I'm sure something will come to me.

I hope you enjoyed this little tour. Join me again for some before and after pictures of the work we're doing in the rest of the house!