I decided to purchase a dual fuel range so that I can have an electric convection oven and gas cooktop. We've been married over 40 years and for the majority of that time I've had an electric cooktop. It's been a struggle for me to convert back to cooking with gas! I have undercooked or burned more food than I did as a teenager when I was teaching myself to cook! LOL!
My dining area had wallpaper and I stripped it off and had the walls textured and painted. I missed the pattern afterwards and had a hard time deciding what I wanted to put up for wall decor. My original idea was to do a 50's diner theme but I couldn't find signs and items that I liked.
Then I thought about doing some vinyl words with my E and came up with this.
None of my Cricut cartridges had a wine glass so I used Design Studio and made my own. Cursive 101 was used for the words and I had a sheet of wall stickers that had grape clusters on it and that's the image in the center.
Here you can see them both.
A full view of the dining area.
Close up of the signs I found at Hobby Lobby to break up the big white wall! I fell in love with the little fat chefs and they had him on so many cute kitchen items that it was hard to decide which ones I'd have a place to put them.
Now that I'm retired and the weather is starting to cool off, I intend to start experimenting baking bread again. I LOVE to bake bread! I usually get carried away, bake way too much and wind up having to give it away.
Years ago I took a pie crust class. I got a great recipe to use that makes enough for three single crust pies so while I was perfecting it and making pies about every other day, my neighbors loved me, for sure!
Up until DH retired eight years ago, he worked overseas. He was gone five weeks and then home five weeks and we became accustomed to that schedule. While he was gone I didn't cook much at all and while he was home we would eat out quite a bit. When you live in a remote area like Siberia or Indonesia, getting to have some good old KFC or Pizza Hut pizza starts to sound really good! So, over those years I've just about forgotten how to cook. Now that my time is my own I want to get back into the habit of cooking our dinner again.
One real incentive to eat at home is living in a small town where restaurant choices are small. We have fast food places and only 3-4 places where the chairs aren't attached to the tables to pick from. While the kitchen was being renovated we ate in them all! Both DH and I traveled so much with our jobs that we got to the point where we'd rather have a bologna sandwich at home than a meal at Red Lobster.
Now that the kitchen renovation is finished, we're starting to update the rest of the house. My carpenter should be here this week to start work on the living room and bathrooms. As soon as he's finished, new floor coverings will be put down throughout the house.
Hopefully, before Thanksgiving all the work will be done and we can get back to normal living!
Kitchen details: cabinets - Cabinets to Go
hardware - Home Depot
countertops - high definition Formica
range - Kenmore Elite dual fuel
sink - Kohler
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| Old kitchen from appraisal photo |
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| Finished! Suspended ceiling and snack bar were eliminated. I reconfigured the layout of the kitchen. Never knew why the original owner had the builder put the dishwasher in the center of the wall! It was too far away from the sink for me. My cooktop was beside the refrigerator so I was constantly turning and walking across from the sink. In the new kitchen, my stove sits where the dishwasher was and the dishwasher is on the left side of the sink. |
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