a tour of my kitchen...

Ok, readers, you asked for it. I may have gone a little overboard here to give you a little peak into my kitchen. But once I start taking pictures I cannot stop. My overwhelming fear is that people out there wil look at the room I painstakingly pieced together and hate it. I guess I must get over it. I love it, and that is what matters, right? I have to live here.

This is the main view. If you can imagine another peninsula coming out where the dishwasher is, that is how the kitchen was arranged before. I have a furniture piece in the middle right now. We have a reclaimed butcher block piece to set on top of that. My paint samples for what color we are going to refinish this piece are stuck on those cabinets on the upper right. I haven't decided yet.
This is my HUGE fridge that barely fit in the space. I had so much fun picking out a fridge. I like side-by-side since I am 5'10'' and hate to bend over to get into my fridge. Love it. To the right is my pantry. The cabinets were hard to pick out. What shade wood? What kind of molding? Modern, antique looking, or somewhere in between? These are maple spice and are not the fanciest cabinets, nor are they the lowest quality ones that you have to assemble yourselves. That would have put my husband over the edge. He is not the handiest of men, so putting together 28 cabinets would not have been good if we wanted them to have right angles and stay together!

Also, some people don't put things on their fridge. I like to display my memories. I have my wedding invitation, several wedding pictures, card that came with flowers that my husband sent, and magnets from all the places I have traveled. It is a collage of my life on display. It gives friends something to look at while I am cooking, and it gives some conversation starters to people I entertain for the church where my husband works.

The sink view with my pot rack above the window. Again, because I am tall, I don't like to dig for things I use a lot. Also, I don't like to sit my pans in each other. The teflon gets scratched. But my pans aren't extremely high quality and someday I wish to have fancy pans to hang up there.
It took me FOREVER to pick out a sink. I grew up with a cast iron one and liked the look of that. I am not a big fan of stainless steel, for some reason or other. This one is actually cast acrylic. It has the look of cast iron, but is more durable and less expensive. I love how big the right sink is and it is sooo deep. The faucet also took a long time to pick out. I wanted something that looked antique, but I don't like to have a separate hot and cold handles. This one we actually found at Sam's for a great price.
A little corner with a cool recipe book and ceramic holder for my recipe cards. The blue "harmony" holder was a gift from Emily at my bridal shower. The cookbook was another wedding gift and has great recipes from a set of twins that grew up in High Point and now have a catering business in California. A few little trinkets that I have hanging on the red, red, wall. I chose the color because it is red, but it is broken up by the cabinets and isn't too overwhelming. I figured that paint is easy to change and when I got tired of it, I could change it. I expect I will only like red while I am younger and will want something tamer on down the road. I decided to go for it now, and be more normal later.
Here is a close-up of my granite pattern. It is called "New Venetian Gold" and has these sparkly sections in it. The speckles hide all sorts of crumbs, which is good and bad, depending on how you look at it. I had the best time picking out the granite. The granite place you go to when you have to pick out your slab is AMAZING. So cool. They have rows and rows of these huge granite slabs and you have to pick the one or two you want and put your name on it. So fun. Did you know there is granite that is mined at the bottom of the ocean and costs $600 per square foot? I didn't. Mine is from Italy, I think.
Here are the knobs. They are acrylic reproductions of antique glass knobs and I found these at Target. There were some ones I loved at Restoration Hardware, but they were $10 a knob and we needed 27. These are pretty close and were $4 per knob.

It was a long process and it was hard to make some of the decisions. I designed most of it with me in mind, knowing that my husband doesn't do as much cooking. The height thing certainly was an issue that I attempted to counterbalance. My pantry has roll-out shelves because I am not going to crawl on my stomach to see what is on the bottom. I take my toe and roll it out!

Hope you enjoyed a little peak into our house. I will give anyone thinking about remodeling their kitchen this advice. It takes longer than you think. It will cost more than you think. How will you eat while your kitchen is torn apart? My fridge was in my family room for a month, and we only had a microwave and my crockpot. Thankfully, this was during the summer so we grilled several nights a week.

Happy decorating! All of you that wanted to see more better comment on all this loveliness. Um, only tell me what you like. Yeah, only the good stuff please. I can't handle the truth if you think it is ugly. I completely understand if it is not your style, though. To each her own!