Loving the new Kitchen!

Well, as my lack of posting suggests, I haven't had all that much time to cook in my new kitchen, but I am enjoying it when I do get the chance. It will be a crazy fall, so I'm sure my posting will be quite random, but I hope to not be too silent.

Before I - hopefully - get back to posting recipes again, I just wanted to finish up posting about the kitchen and the improvements we made.

First, the cosmetic changes. No more hunter green!

We replaced the hunter green laminate countertops with quartz. I've noticed that the counter tops don't make a huge impact from a distance (they look plain and white), but I love them up close....little flecks of burgundy, brown, gray, etc.

Dupont Zodiaq in Cappuccino

That empty space above the microwave where the vent used to show now has a proper cabinet. Speaking of the wall cabinets, we got rid of the oak and replaced them with maple. We also warmed up the yellow wall color with a warmer yellow.

Wall cabinets: Kraftmaid - Hanley door style in Maple with Toffee finish
Paint: Benjamin Moore - Straw

And no more vinyl flooring with hunter green accents. We now have porcelain tile. This photo also shows that although we were a bit nervous, we ended up with plenty of room between the island and the sink. We were worried it might be a bit crowded, especially since the island has pull out drawers for my cookware and appliances.

Flooring: Florida Tile - Tivoli - Beige
Pulls on wall cabinets: Amerock Swirlz 3" Spiral Pull - Wrought Iron
Pulls on island: Amerock Swirlz 3" Pull - Weathered Nickel

No more fluorescent light box. Now we have recessed lights and 2 pendants over the island.

Pendant lights: Kichler - Wedgeport - Old Bronze

But we also added a lot of functionality.

One thing I'm really loving is my huge sink. The installers joked that we could take a bath in it! It's not quite THAT big, but it is large. My large pots and pans and even my cookie sheets fit completely in the sink, no problem. Before, even a small 12-inch skillet would stick out of the sink and clank the sides as we washed it. Add to it the swan neck faucet and there's pretty much nothing we can't wash in our sink now.

Sink: Elkay ELU 281610
SS, Undermount, Single Bowl
16 x 28 and 10 inches deep
Faucet: Kohler Revival, brushed Chrome

Another added functionality is pull out drawers in the island. I love that I don't have to reach deep inside my cabinets and bang and upend a bunch of stuff to get out the stuff I need. It's a bit hard to fit in all of the stuff I had before, but I'm moving things I rarely use to my pantry closet which is probably something I should have done a long time ago.

And, of course the breakfast bar. Here's our new island from the front. And yes, I am still missing some hardware. I forgot that we'd be going from single doors to double doors, so I was short a couple of pulls! The cabinet to the far left is the trash drawer. I had to give up cabinet space to fit that in, but I'm really pleased to not have an ugly trash can sitting out.

Island cabinets: Kraftmaid - Melrose door style - Peppercorn

On the other side, a breakfast bar. Again, we were quite relieved to see that even though we added seating, we still had plenty of room to walk past. I also painted the door to the garage. When we first moved in it was the dreaded hunter green but we had it painted white. When I went to paint the door leading out to the deck, I was going to paint it white too but then decided it needed something warmer so I decided to pick up the burgundy/cranberry tones of the countertops and I ended up with this color. Much better than plain old white!

Door paint: Benjamin Moore - Chestnut
Dog: Golden Retriever named Bailey :)

Anyway, that's probably more than anyone ever wanted to know about our kitchen! I hope to finish it off by adding more colored accents (playing off the plate hanging over the sink) - mainly gold, cranberry, navy, and green. Perhaps a nice fruit bowl here, a colored utensil crock there a valance for the window, etc.

I hope to get to a garden update something this week too. I'm FINALLY starting to get some tomatoes. I sure hope it doesn't cool off too much yet - it would make me sad to end the season with so many green tomatoes.....so much unrealized potential!

It's done!

The kitchen is officially done! It was actually done this past Monday, but we still had people coming out to finish up a few other projects (trim around garage doors, new shower faucet, etc.), so we are officially done as of today.

It's been a busy week trying to get back into the work routine and I'm still not back into the cooking or blogging groove yet and I'm not sure when that will happen as the next couple of weeks don't show any signs of letting up! Tomorrow we are off to DE/Philly to see Spamalot and then on Tuesday we go down to Hershey to see Bruce Springsteen. I'm VERY excited for both, but especially for Bruce - we're both big fans.

Anyway, before things get too crazy again, a quick post about the remodel. I'll follow up with more details and photos later. Suffice it to say we're loving it - not only for cosmetic reasons, but it's so much more efficient now too.

I posted a lot of before shots on this thread, but I figured we needed at least one side by side shot, so here's BEFORE:

(The wallpaper has been gone for a couple of years, but I just had
to include this shot as the before because this is how it looked
when we bought the house. The guy to right is our realtor - this is the photo
I took when we looked at the house.)

And here's the AFTER:

Of course we would have loved to get rid of the soffit and the white microwave and put in a fancy backsplash, but considering we started this project only planning to do the island and floor, we're pretty ecstatic with the outcome! I never dreamed I'd have solid surface counter tops and an undermount sink.

But it's late and we have to get an early start to get to a matinee show tomorrow.....so it's off to bed.............

Getting back to it with a fruit tart!

I can't believe that I let three weeks past since my last post! I thought that with me not cooking any new recipes during the remodel that I'd get a lot of posting done. Obviously THAT didn't happen. Partly I was busy painting and then just too tired and partly I was too preoccupied to sit down and write a post.

It's been a long 2 1/2 weeks and we had a fumble or two along the way, but things have gone pretty well overall.

It's almost done. I finally got all my appliances back in on Friday and at the 11th hour, the plumber came out and hooked up my dishwasher at Friday night. And good thing too - we had 8 overnight guests stay over last night. Not only did we have overnight guests, but it was also my son's birthday - he turned 11 yesterday. My youngest is 11! Eek!

I spent most of the Friday scrubbing appliances and making sure everything was clean as it came into the kitchen, cleaning out my dining room which had been serving as a prep area/mini kitchen and loading the essentials back into the cabinets. There is still a lot of stuff to move up from the basement, but I'm taking my time and taking this opportunity to arrange things more efficiently.

Yesterday was spent actually COOKING in my new kitchen. So far I love how much more efficient it really is. But more on the kitchen later. We are still waiting for the pendant lights to go in, outlets on the island, a transition strip on the floor, some ceiling paint and a few other odds and ends. Once that's all done, I'll post some pictures.

Since we had JUST gotten our kitchen back into working order, I kept it pretty simple for our guests......hamburgers, hotdogs and brats along with gazpacho and a green bean salad. (Both of those dishes were designed to use up beans and cucumbers from the garden. More on the garden later too!) We topped off dinner with my son's birthday dessert request - a dessert pizza/fruit tart.

My son had fun decorating his own tart.

This recipe starts with - gasp - a sugar cookie mix to form the crust. I keep saying that some day I'll figure out the proportions needed and make my own sugar cookie dough (I do have a good recipe, but it's much more than I need for one pizza), but with everything going on this week, it was definitely easier to just follow the recipe as it was written. And I have to admit, even with the mix it turns out quite well.

The recipe calls for adding finely chopped almonds to the cookie batter - the almonds add a really nice element of interest to the crust. The dough is spread out on a pizza pan and baked in the oven until lightly golden. You top the crust with a mixture of cream cheese and powdered sugar and then finish it off with fresh fruit and let it chill. Very easy. The hardest part is decorating it - it takes some time to arrange all those little blueberries - but it's also a lot of fun!

Fruit Tart/Dessert Pizza

Since we had 12 people I made two tarts. I invited DS to decorate one on his own and I took over the other. We now have only one piece left, so I think it was a hit. It really is a fun summer dessert - it's not hard to make and yet it makes a very pretty presentation and I don't think I've run into anyone who didn't enjoy eating it too.