Newest addition: a dishwasher!

Merry belated Christmas! I hope you all have been doing well the last couple months. Things have been INSANELY busy here between school and work, so I made the executive decision to put home improvement projects and the blog on hold until I got to Christmas break. Anywho, to the topic at hand...

We knew when we bought our house that we would be washing dishes by hand for a while. Not only was there no dishwasher, there wasn't even a place to install one! This is our kitchen when we moved in.

No dishwasher...that blank space to the left of the sink is where a refrigerator originally resided.

This routine of washing dishes by hand was fine for a while. I never had a dishwasher in my college days in Boston, but as often as we cook and entertain, handwashing every dish has been pretty cumbersome. It is by far the chore that we spend the most time on. My poor, wonderful mother-in-law washed every dish from Thanksgiving dinner for five people and it took forever, even with another person drying and putting away as we went.

Since I've gone back to school, my husband (who is also wonderful) has been doing most of the dishes because he has been home so much more than me, but he is starting school in January as well! So with BOTH of us in school and working, we decided what we really wanted for Christmas was a dishwasher. The consensus was that it would make our lives WAY easier, and would free up a lot of study (and fun) time for both of us. Well, thanks to a very generous gift from my parents, we finally have a dishwasher!

We decided to go with a Bosch for its low volume and efficiency. However, before it could be installed, I had to build a place to install it!

Since we aren't ready to tackle a remodel yet, we decided that a temporary box made of plywood would be fine. Just something to keep the dishwasher from walking across the room. Since the sales guy from the appliance store gave me a diagram with the dimensions of the dishwasher and surrounding box, This was pretty easy. I picked up a couple pieces of plywood and a 1x2 from Home Depot, and had the nice man in the lumber department cut the plywood to size. I think everything cost about $40. I painted the plywood so that it was waterproof. Next, I cut the 1x2's into the correct lengths to be used for supports. Lastly, I installed the plywood by screwing it into the 1x2's, using a level to make sure nothing turned out crooked. This is what I ended up with.

Oh, and I also later added a shim under the front of the vertical piece to hold it steady, since there wasn't a good way to attach it to the tile. I did try drilling through the tile to add a bracket to the floor, but the tile bits kept losing their pointed heads. Has anyone else had that happen?

Anyway, when the guys came to deliver and install the dishwasher, they had to drill a hole at the back corner of the cabinet to run a water line. They also had to work some plumbing magic and install a split valve under the sink and drill a hole through the horizontal plywood to run the electrical cord (I discovered too late that there is no electrical box under the sink). Here is the final result...

  

We are eventually planning to rip out (at least) everything from the countertops down and start over, so this is definitely a cheap temporary solution, but we have a dishwasher! Life is better already.

Kitchen To-do's

Now that I've shared my kitchen painting expedition, I figure it's time to let you know what else is in store for this room. There is a fair amount of work to be done in here, but at this point, we aren't planning a major overhaul.

SO, in no particular order, here's the plan....

1. Replace the stove with a glass top, energy efficient model. The stove was the only appliance in the kitchen when we moved in and while the oven works great, some of the burners don't (namely the two larger ones). Plus, we'd love to eventually have a sleek stainless model instead of what I'll call "aged bisque" for now.

2. Replace and extend the countertops. The large space where the fridge is supposed to go (ours doesn't fit....my husband eats too much haha) would be much more useable if our counter went all the way to the wall, especially since our kitchen is rather lacking in actual work space. This is pretty far in the future, but we're thinking quartz or possibly granite.

3. Once the counters are installed, we can install a dishwasher (and I'll have a dance party)! I survived three years in Boston without one, and it's really not THAT bad to wash all of our dishes by hand, but dishwashers are just so darned convenient. Also, we already have a dishwasher (gifted to us by some friends who found out they were moving mid-kitchen renovation), so we don't even have to buy one!

4. Install a shelf or two in the extra vertical space left in the fridge nook. This will give us a nominal amount of pantry space in the kitchen that currently does not exist (our pantry is in the basement. I love it. It's huge!).

5. Figure out a better situation for the fridge.

It's huge...it may mean closing up the pass through into the living room(that may have been intended as a dining area) and widening the door to make up for the loss of natural light, though we only get part of that natural light right now because the fridge blocks it anyway. We shall see.

 

 Any big plans for your kitchen? Hope everyone has had a good week!

Painting the Kitchen

Our kitchen seems to be the one room in the house (besides the basement) that doesn't get a ton of natural light. I am sure the dead-body-beige paint that was there when we moved in didn't help. Here's what it looked like when we moved in (and until yesterday)....is it just me?

I don't have anything against the color beige, but this specific color combined with the fact that it is flat paint seemed to just suck in all the light. Yesterday, I decided to do something about it.

I had nearly a full gallon of paint left from painting the dining room, and since one of the dining room walls extends into the kitchen, it seemed like a natural move to paint the kitchen the same aqua color as the dining room.

I already had all the painting tools I needed leftover from other painting projects, so this was a buy-nothing project (my favorite kind). Satin paint (to reflect light, rather than suck it in), paint brushes, edger, roller, paint tray and painters tape were the only supplies I needed, and they were sitting in the garage waiting for me, and since I didn't have anything else to do yesterday afternoon, I decided to get to work.

I started by removing all the light and outlet covers, the knife rack, clock, etc. from the walls, plus doing some general rearranging so I had easy access to the two-plus-a-tiny-section walls that needed painting. Oh...and remember the lime green I found under the outlet covers when I painted the bedroom? I think the paint I found under the outlet covers in the kitchen might beat it.

Oh....and the ceiling was once painted yellow also. How do I know? I made the mistake of looking up behind the cornice over the sink.

With my nominal amount of prep work done, I started painting. I like to start with edging because I think roller over brush stroke makes a smoother texture transition than the other way around. Once that was done, I started in with the roller.

Also, I thought I was going to have to call in reinforcements to move the refrigerator away from the wall, but it's actually on wheels, so it's pretty easy to move by myself.

Anyway, here's the end result. I think the aqua really makes my red kitchen stuff pop.

It also makes the cabinets look brighter.

So what do you think? Not so bad for a free project and about an hour and a half of my time! What did you tackle this weekend?