More Kitchen Updates!

Ryan and I bought our house almost exactly two years ago, with the idea that it would be a good starter home.  Mostly, I think, because it is so small (998 square feet to be exact). While we were in the initial stages of thinking about redoing the kitchen we kept asking ourselves if we wanted to stay in this house long term or not.  After a lot of discussion we decided that we love our location, community, and house, and wanted to commit to staying here, in this house. We also really liked the challenge of living small.  1,000 square feet is not a lot of space, especially when you are planning on growing your family. The thing is, this house was built in 1950 which means a family, probably with a lot of kids, lived here at one time.  In 1950 I don't think this house was considered small, it was most likely just an average sized home.  I think in the US we've become so accustom to seeing and living in large homes that to live in anything smaller than 2,000 square feet, especially with kids, seems crazy.  Honestly, maybe in a few years when we have kids I will look back on this and think I was crazy to think that living in a house less than 1,000 square feet was a good idea.  But for now, I like the challenge a small house poses.  Having little space naturally challenges you to live more minimally. It challenges you to think critically about what you are buying since you might not have room for it, or room to store it.  It challenges you to purge and to keep things tidy so that you have space. For now, Ryan and I are up for the challenge.  I think I will use this blog to document how we live in our small space. Kind of like the HGTV show Tiny Homes, but with slightly more space. Ha!


But back to the kitchen remodel. Most of the cabinets finally went in yesterday and today!! The rest will go in on Tuesday. Since we committed to staying in this house, we decided the kitchen needed to be as functional as possible and we could invest to make it the kitchen of our dreams.  Before we decided we were going to stay long term in this house, we were just going to do cosmetic upgrades to the kitchen like new hardware, new flooring, new counter tops.  As we talked more about it though, we realized the one thing our kitchen really needed was more counter space.  So, we decided to split the tall cabinets on the east wall to upper and lower cabinets instead of one giant tall cabinet. 

Look at all the new counter space!

Since we invested in buying new cabinets and counters for the kitchen, we decided to make do with our current appliances and replace them one at a time.  In the old kitchen, the microwave was hidden inside the tall cabinets, which was great.  However, since we were splitting the tall cabinet in half and adding a counter top, we needed to find a new place for the microwave.  I didn't want the microwave taking up precious counter space, so we decided to get a new microwave that acted as the stove vent.  The old kitchen vent was randomly in the middle of the kitchen ceiling not very close to the stove top, and it vented into the attic.  With the new microwave, we can get rid of the ugly ceiling vent, and reroute the exhaust to vent outside of the house which is much safer.  Since we were already getting a new microwave, we decided to get a new stove at the same time so both appliances matched.  Ryan is pretty excited for the new stove.  He has also informed me that I can't touch it or cook with it because I will make it dirty.  Rude.  But hey, if that means he does all the cooking I am fine with that! 

That is not the new stove, the contractor just needed the old stove to place the cabinets correctly.