Oh, I am so stoked. After weeks and weeks and thousands and thousands of dollars, I have a shiny new kitchen in my house. We gutted the place and redid it from the ground up… the only thing we saved was the refrigerator.
Hamadryad has graciously and somewhat recklessly offered to help me put together a Web site with photos and diary-style commentary to commemorate the whole experience, but in the meantime you can see pix of the finished kitchen here.
Dallas Dopers who remember how awful the old kitchen looked are invited to comment on the makeover.
I’m so jealous. JEALOUS JEALOUS JEALOUS! (love your new stove BTW)
You’re complaining about working in a kitchen from the 70s? My kitchen dates from the 50s. Granted, retro is sorta gitchy, but ugh.
When we go for THE BIG REMODEL a few years down the road (adding a second-story to half the house to gain a master bedroom, bath, and mega-closets), I’m hoping to add a kitchen makeover without anyone noticing.
I want a warming drawer. I deserve a warming drawer.
That is GREAT!!! Chef. I love it. I can certainly imagine how proud you are of that. I really like the glass block wall, and of course, the floor and the stove and the countertop and the shelf for the microwave and the maple wood.
It is so bright and really, really nice. (And I do know what it looked like before.)
If you’d seen the Festival of Avocado® that characterized my old kitchen, you’d know why I was happy to see it go. Not to mention the chocolate-brown faux-rattan plastic cabinet doors and the linoleum floor that never looked clean no matter how much effort you put into cleaning it. (admittedly, this also meant that you could slack off on the mopping once in a while and it didn’t look any different.)
If you want a warming drawer, Cheffie’s tip is to use the drying cycle of your dishwasher. It really works. You can even cook in there - anything that responds to moist heat, like fish - just wrap it in heavy foil, put it in the top rack, and run the diswasher without any soap in it. grin
No, it’s a laminate flooring material called WilsonArt (a somewhat better known but inferior-quality version is called Pergo). It’s available in planks that look just like wood or tiles that look like (in this case) stone. It looks REALLY nice… the pictures don’t really do it justice. You’ll see the next time you come over.
The only “before” shot that’s on the net and linkable is this one, which shows a bit of the old vent-a-hood and one of the ugly cabinets behind psiekier and me. It’s from our Xmas party last year at my place. The pics from the Mardi Gras party show a lot more of the kitchen… but they’re all on my home computer and I’ve never gotten around to putting them on the net for all to enjoy (BAD Cheffie! NO saffron!)
I have taken a LOT of pix throughout the remodeling project, though, and they’ll be up there one of these days.
Oh, I almost forgot! That picture also shows the old, ugly, huge fluorescent lights that used to blight the kitchen - as you can see in the new pix, we had the contractor seal those up and install incandescent floodlights instead. MUCH better.
Also, I want to point out once more that psiekier’s wine appears to be radioactive. Wine gives ME a glow but I usually have to drink it first.