Kitchen - Original

We haven't touched the house since Tuesday, mostly due to the heat. But Ben is coming back to Seattle this morning, and we're all going to do a little work before heading down to Portland for an overnight trip. The lumber was delivered into our driveway yesterday, so we need to move that all to the back to make room for another dumpster.

Since there's not more progress to report, for now I'll just walk you through another room of the house, as it was when we found it. Pictured at right is the kitchen, taken from the vantage point of the dining room. The door you see in the picture leads to the stairs, second bedroom and backyard (and will lead to the laundry room as well, once we put that in, yay!).

As you can see, it's not a huge kitchen, but it's not tiny either. Although I had originally hoped for a separate dining room, I've grown fond of the house's open layout, flowing from living room to dining room to kitchen without any pesky doorways in between. Every time I do laundry at my current apartment, I am reminded that doorways are the bane of my existence, as I have to navigate out a door, down two flights of stairs, around parked cars and through two more doors -- one of which is always locked -- all while carrying a basket full of clothes. (Did I already say 'yay' to having a laundry room in-house?) Ben may build a little lip of wall between the living and dining rooms, just so the spaces are more defined, but we're going to keep it pretty open.

The kitchen has good light, both from a window above the sink and from a window in the dining room. The fluorescent lights you see in the picture are awful, and will be replaced with something less institutional. The "original" floor was also awful, consisting of layers and layers of linoleum. I put "original" in quotation marks because the floors we saw when we first walked into the house were obviously not the original floors; the much linoluem must be inflicted over time. Weeks ago, Ben and Sam tried to remove all of the linoleum but with little luck -- this is one matrushka doll that can't be opened -- so it looks like we'll just be laying new tile or wood flooring on top.

We've already ripped out all of the cabinets, which will be replaced and augmented for more storage space. The sink will still be under the window, but we're moving the oven and range to the other side of the kitchen (you can see the current hood on the left in the picture) so we can put a dishwasher next to the sink. We'll also move the fridge out to the end of the counters (toward the dining room).

Unfortunately, I neglected to take a picture of the original dining area, but there's not much to see there anyways. On the south side of the room (left in the picture) is a bay window. On the opposite wall is a doorway that currently leads to the master bedroom and to the floor's only bathroom.