The Other Kitchen

I cooked in the "new" kitchen at the new house this past weekend. It was strange. Strange, in that I'm not used to the kitchen yet, the layout of it, the largeness of it. It lacks all the familiar things I've grown used to and taken for granted here in my apartment kitchen. In my apartment kitchen everything is within reach, unless, because of lack of space, its stored behind the couch. The new kitchen is HUGE, at least by the standards that I'm used to. If I need something, it's... all... the... way... across... the... room. For the time being, I'm working with the barest minimum of cooking paraphanalia, and it may be some time before I can build up to having all the things I want. Things I take for granted in the city apartment, like a baster, I do not yet have for the house kitchen.

I need to get used to the quirkiness of the stove. I'm used to the stove in my apartment, I have to light the oven and the burners manually, and the temperature varies as much as 25 degrees less than what the knob is turned to, its small, only 23 inches wide and while I'll never be able to cook a 25 pound turkey in it, it’s always been able to accommodate my needs. With the new stove, I have yet to find all those quirks, and while it can cook a 25 pound turkey with no problem, I don't really like the stove or feel like I want to keep it, with its quirks or without.

I know this is all new right now, and over time, I'll get used to the layout, and get used to how big the kitchen is, that eventually it too will get filled with the gadgets I love. I'll find the right groove and love it too, but for right now, it’s hit or miss.

Miss: Pork Chops Friday night....burned.

Hit: Roast Chicken Saturday night...the juiciest most flavorful chicken I've ever roasted.

As you can see, I didn't cook anything terribly adventurous or fancy this weekend. The main work I did in the kitchen was continuing with cleaning it and getting it set up and painted to my liking. I thought, just as a point of reference for you, I’d show you a comparison of the two kitchens. The kitchen I live with and use in Manhattan looks like this, as you can see its tiny. (I wish I could find the pictures of what it looked like before we renovated it 10 years ago, that kitchen was from the sixties and had a tiny little bar sink and no counter space at all, so this kitchen was a vast improvement.) The "new" kitchen at the house, is the size of the state of Texas, ok I'm exaggerating but it comes close. I mean, look how long this counter is!

There are a lot of things I like and dislike about the new kitchen. First and foremost of the dislikes are the fluorescent lights. I'm not a fan of fluorescent lights AT ALL. I hate the green cast and don't like the cold institutional feel of them, and I certainly don't want them in my kitchen. Eventually these will be changed to non fluorescent lights; I'm also not keen on the size and shape of them, so changing them is for the best. There's another fluorescent light over the sink, that one, is at least hidden, but it makes an awful buzzing noise. That will be changed too.

I love the opening at the back kitchen wall, (please ignore the mess) but I dislike the stenciling that frames it. Here's a detail of it. Actually, there's really nothing wrong with the stencil, it's just not my taste. Maybe, if it just ran across the top and didn't frame the whole cutout, I'd like it better. It would be hard to keep anyway, because I've begun changing the color of the kitchen from white to a couple of different shades of green, (another reason why I want to get rid of the fluorescents, it makes the new green paint look sickly) and it would be hard to paint around it. The sink also has an opening, which overlooks the family room. There is only one solid wall in the kitchen and because of that it feels very open and light in there, coming from my windowless cramped apartment kitchen, it's a nice change.

There are quite a few ways to enter the house and I like that you can enter or exit from the kitchen too. What I like the most is the screened porch that's right outside. The porch has two doors, one leads to the driveway and the other, leads to a deck off the family room.

I like the cabinets, I think the wood is nice and the horizontal slats are different and unusual looking. The previous owners did some interesting things with the space inside of them to make life easier and to maximize the use of cabinet space. There's a Lazy-Susan type thing in the corner cabinet by the sink, which turns outwards and then pulls out for easy use. There's a set of very nice drawers in the bottom cabinet of the long counter that also pulls out and which I'm using to store the pots and pans for now. I love, love, love the pantry (my first ever) and plan on putting it to good use once I'm settled and can learn about canning. I plan on lining the shelves with shelf paper, which I already picked. I like the simplicity of this design and bonus! the green matches the new paint. I really dislike the drawer pulls. They are really not my taste, but I'm not going to be able to do anything about them for a while. I counted up how many I would need (26) and at starting prices of $5.00 and up each for the ones I like, drawer pulls are something that will not be getting changed anytime soon. If they are brass, (they look like some sort of brassy metal) I'll polish them up, I’m hoping that will help make them look a little better, if not I'm going to remove every single one of them and paint them another color. I like the tile floor, although I would have chosen a darker color. Light floors tend to be less forgiving when it comes to messes, so I'll constantly have to mop, which quite frankly, sucks, but I'll live. The stove and the kitchen counters are also on the list of things we will eventually change. I would really like a new stove, this one is kind of old and I honestly just don't like it, so it's on the list of things that will go once other priorities are taken care of. The counter, like the floor is less forgiving when it comes to messes. Tom and I both like the look and feel of slate countertops and so one day...

I did get a chance to start painting, which was exciting. It was a little difficult moving about since I'm pretty pregnant now. It took a long time to tape up the parts that weren't supposed to get paint and it was difficult to move around in the tight areas. I took things slowly though and was able to complete one color. I have two colors planned for this kitchen, a dark green for the backsplash and the major appliance wall, and a lighter green for the other 2 walls and the kitchen trim. The black arrow points to where the light green will be painted on and the red arrow points to my messy paint job. I now have to touch up the ceiling along with a few other places around the kitchen. Since I didn’t get very far with the painting this weekend, I’ll have to finish it up another time, the good thing, the most difficult areas are done!

So, that was the weekend. It was a lot of work but it was all good, and I think, in time, I'll learn to love this kitchen too.

Written by Deb on November 17, 2003 01:35 AM