The kitchen is very important to me. With a husband who cooks for a living and me who bakes when stressed we both need a space that allows us to have room in the kitchen to do the things we love as well as be a mixture of functional and pretty.
When we were house hunting one of the things we were really looking at were the kitchen as we knew that we wouldn’t have money to renovate it for a while so it needed to be something that we loved and we really did find that with our current kitchen.
Nigel and I are both a fan of open concept and with our kitchen we are able to see out into the dining room and living room which we love for the open houses we are hoping to have soon as well as even just being able to watch TV while washing dishes or working.
We painted the back wall of the kitchen with the same dark accent colour as through the rest of the house and the rest is the light grey. The floor is a grey vinyl tile which goes well with the paint colours that we choose and the cabinets are all white.
While the kitchen from the outside is mostly set up the way that I would like the inside of the drawers are not so I will not be sharing those. Now that stores are opening back up I am on the hunt for drawer organizers for utensils as well as a new one for cutlery.
Our pantry is the first thing you see on the right. I think that it is a perfect size for our needs and I love that the drawers pull out so that we can reach everything easily. The top section is hard to reach the top of, but we only keep extras up there so it isn’t too bad.
Then there is the fridge which isn’t that special, but I must admit that I am really enjoying having an ice machine for the first time, especially as it is warming up and I am making iced tea more often.
As we continue on we the small appliance corner, where we have the microwave, toaster, kettle, mixer, and blender. It is nice to be able to have everything all in one area and that we have the space to keep these things out without moving them into the cupboards.
Then there is the oven and then moving to the left what is mostly known as the “chopping counter”. Both Nigel and I mainly work in this side of the kitchen which is why it also has many of our everyday items such as oil, salt, pepper, and cooking spray.
We also keep our fruit and veggie bins here, which is mostly empty at the moment but are very helpful for having items out. Then we move onto the sink which is our dream sink. The second year we were living in Ontario we had a very deep sink and fell in love. We knew we wanted a deep sink as it is so much easier to wash dishes and we got that here.
This last little section of the counter we have some jars of common used ingredients such as nuts, granola, chocolate chips, popcorn, and seeds. In a pinch I love mixing together these items (minus the popcorn kernels) together for a great and easy trail mix snack. The jars are all found through thrift stores as well as some empty jars from pasta and other food items.
This counter is usually not this clean as it often contains both dirty dishes to be washed as well as a pile of recycling to go out to the garage.
On to the walls. Right above the dishwasher in this small wall between the kitchen and the hallway we have a whiteboard to write down our meals for the week. On the hallway wall we have two prints from Ikea with one featuring veggies and the other herbs.
Over by the fruit basket we have a selection of 4 pictures that we picked up from the interior and was made by a local artist. The colours are absolutely beautiful and I love what they bring to this area. I also love that there is a window here in the kitchen where I can look out into a bit of my garden.
Over the bar area we have some hanging lights that we surrounded with a metal cage from Ikea. I haven’t used these lights very often, but I still like what they look like even with the lights off.
We always have water on bar to fill up from which is handy and right now the counter is full of fresh strawberries and there is usually a cookbook or two on there as well.
Lastly I have more dry ingredients up on top of my cabinets. Since Nigel and I are both tall we can reach these when we need them and they serve double duty as being decorations as well as the common things that I use in my kitchen.
I am really happy with the kitchen that our house has as well as the little things that we have added to make the kitchen more us and make it work for us.
Let me know what your dream kitchen would have and what you look for in a kitchen. For us it was the open concept and the deep sink.
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6 thoughts on “creating home – kitchen”