Plans, big plans...

So, we've been living for a few weeks with a large cardboard box in th middle of our kitchen. We're trying to simulate a kitchen island, without breaking down any walls or tearing out anything functional.

Here she is In all her glory. Noah thought he would be helpful and started to cut it up, so it's not quite as tidy and semi-functional as it first was.

We tried it going the other direction for about 5 minutes, like if we were to have a peninsula. The flow was terrible like that, so we learned that we definitely don't like that idea.

Now imagine in place of that sheet of cardboard, a sheet of gleaming granite, and while you're imagining, paint the cabinet faces white and replace that awful range and hood with something pin-worthy.  And, add light, lots more light!

Here's a rough drawing of the most challenging areas in this house, compliments of Floorplanner.com, where I only wasted about 3 hours playing to get this result.

This isn't perfectly to scale, but you can see that we have a pretty big kitchen. We call it the 10 step kitchen, that's how many steps between the fridge and the sink. Boo.  The flow is not cook friendly at all. The space is just a bit too big for function, but not really big enough for the typical new construction kitchen. It was last updated in the late 1980s with fairly high-end cabinets and very basic of everything else.

I'll try to get some images of what I'm thinking up here, if the Ikea kitchen planner takes fewer hours than floorplanner, and has an export option, I'll show you what I come up with.  Don't expect this all to come together quickly... We need to paint the upstairs and entryway before we can move into kitchen/dining. At the rate we work, it could be a year before I'm cooking in a functional and stylish kitchen.

And, do you see that main floor bathroom?! I have plans for that too!  Maybe we'll start implementing work weekends like what got us through the condo project at a reasonable pace. In the meantime my Pinterest board is nearly overflowing with kitchens, tiles, appliances...