Kitchen Makeover

So the rug wasn’t the only sale I hit up during all the big Columbus Day weekend sales (seriously…any holiday warrants a sale these days!).  We came home with something shiny, and silver, well okay…technically it’s stainless steel.  Any guesses as to what this object of desire might be?  None?  Really?!  Alrighty then.  It’s a DISHWASHER!  Yippeeeee!  You see…we haven’t had a dishwasher since moving into the house a year and a half ago.  The house came with this baby:

The green thing, on the left, which never worked from day one.  So now, we are the proud owners of this bad boy:

AND I scored a ridiculous deal on it.  I found it advertised in a sale flyer for the local appliance store, Dunnett’s Appliance in Bangor, Maine.  It was originally priced at $749 marked on sale to $399 plus you got a FREE $50 Visa gift card with your purchase, theoretically bringing the price down to $349.  It’s a dishwasher I’ve stalked in the not so distant past so I was so excited to finally bring this bad boy home.  You see, our dishes situation is, on a good day, a bit out of control.

Our sink looks like this ALL THE TIME.  Actually, this is pretty good looking.  Normally there’s a trail of dirty dishes migrating across the counter tops.  But this is only after day two of not washing the dishes.  You should see what it looks like once day four hits.  I used to like to do the dishes.  But that was back when I lived by myself and I didn’t use as many as Colby and I, as a duo, use.  I’m quite sick of washing dishes and damn it, I bought a dishwasher.  Woohoo!  The conundrum however, is where to put it.  Here’s our current kitchen, dirty dishes and all:

And a closer view of the area where the old dishwasher was:

And an even closer look at the old dishwasher cubby used as valuable storage space:

Are you beginning to see where I’m going with my conundrum?  Yup…we took out our old, non-functioning dishwasher and replaced it with oh so valuable storage space.  You see, storage space in our kitchen is at a premium.  There aren’t alot of cabinets and the ones we do have are not very functional.  The corner cabinets aren’t easily accessible so you loose things to their depths or just forget they’re there.  So while we’ve been patiently waiting for our dishwasher delivery (Dunnett’s offers free delivery for purchases over $300), I’ve been trying to come up with a storage solution.  Colby thinks we should store things in the basement.  Puh-lease!  My pie plate is not going to live down in that dark dungeon!  I tried to think of areas to add shelves, or maybe we could do some minor cabinet removal/floating shelf installation, or something else drastic.  Then I had an epiphany moment this afternoon.  Storage benches!  Behold the game plan:

We have a cute new dining room that’s basically functional, meaning that we have two tables.  It’s about time we start using the dining room table and then give this one, that’s been hanging in the kitchen, the boot:

Well, not really the boot, just move it to the basement.  I intend to use those chairs at the kitchen island once we commence operation dream kitchen.  But that project is still years down the road.  Once the table is out of the way, that opens up this entire wall:

The door on the left is our coat closet and the doorway on the right leads to the entryway, the entrance door we use most often, and the deck.  The wall between the closet and the entry is just asking to be connected.  What better connector than a wall of storage benches.  The benches would be dual purpose, storing less often used kitchen items and also providing us a slightly lower place to sit and put on shoes (the pub style table was a little tall for that task).  Here is a view of the wall looking towards the entry:

And another looking from the entry:

I have no clue yet what I want the benches to look like.  All I do know is that they will be white.  Oh, and while I’m at it this has got to go:

This has got to be the ugliest linoleum/rug in the kitchen combo I have ever seen.  Goose spends most of his time in the kitchen and he agrees.  It’s bad.  He even went a little crazy once and tried to tear up not only the rug (in the above pic), but also the linoleum:

The flooring is just all around bad in here.  It looks ugly and completely unfinished:

In case I become MIA, I can be found Pinterest-ing away trying to find the perfect inspiration picture so I can have my carpenter, Colby, build the benches.  In the meantime, maybe I should finish that cabinet painting project that I started last November so we no longer have that two-toned cabinet theme going on?

Ok, because I’m completely and utterly all over the place these days, here’s a recap of all the projects that are either currently going on or on the horizon:

• Refinishing the staircase (I’m up to my eyeballs in painting this behemoth as I blog away)
• Someday we will get back to making our his/hers desk
• Before the desk goes in, I feel the need to refinish the parlor floor so I don’t have to move the desk out to do it later
• Finally….FINALLY, finish painting the kitchen cabinets
• Tear up the kitchen’s linoleum floor and carpet and paint the plywood floor underneath…anything is better than what it looks like now
• Build storage benches for the kitchen
• Tear out old storage shelves and hook up the new dishwasher
• Oh yeah…and I still haven’t even started painting the hallway and dining room trim

So many projects…so little time.

Pssst…so I had the strangest thing happen with my old Mac computer this evening.  Two of the three USB ports just won’t work.  What gives?  So I shut it down and bring it up multiple times and they still don’t work.  Then I find out that I can’t have both my mouse and my camera plugged in simultaneously.  Weird!  Has anyone else ever encountered such a strange problem?!  It sure made photo uploads difficult!