Emiloo

2007-01-16

Kitchen Bitchin'

Well, here I am again, for my semi-yearly diary update. You might ask, what significant event might have moved me to update my stagnant joke of a diary? Pregnancy? Moving out of the country? A wedding?

Well, close. Cabinets! Over the MLK weekend, Seth and I ventured down to Atlanta to enter the hermetically sealed wonderland that is Ikea and order ourselves some kitchen cabinets and countertops.

These cabinets (though made of fiberboard, get off my back�don�t make me pull out the Consumer Reports ratings on your asses) are everything my shitty old cabinets are not. For example, my new upper cabinets will actually be deep enough to hold a 12� dinner plate. Amazing, right? A small thing to ask, I know, but I get excited over the little things. Also, my lower cabinets will not leave little piles of sawdust in my dishes (uh, I guess because they�re not �real� wood, but whatever) from opening and closing the drawers.

The countertops are beech butcher block, and really, all they have to do to make me happy is not be white laminate with gold speckles in it. Gold speckles, y�all.

Anyway, my intent is to track all of my progress here on ol� diaryland.

Perhaps you'll believe that when you see it, but let's just be optimistic for now, shall we? I�ll try to follow through. After all, we�re remodeling the kitchen either way; it�s just a matter of whether I have enough energy to download photos and post them here and bitch about how I�ve been eating microwaved soup for a month.

Right now we�re in a bit of a holding pattern�we ordered the cabinets, but they won�t be in for two weeks. I�m not about to start ripping my kitchen all up before I get the cabinets, so all I can do is obsessively imagine my kitchen-to-be over and over again, annoying everyone I come in contact with.

But I do have some current pictures, to demonstrate the sad state of things in the ol� kitchen.

Here is the kitchen before we bought the house. Note the earthy color scheme, inspired by the colors of dirt and dust. That swanky vinyl on the floor lies atop 3 other layers of God-knows-what.

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This one kind of reminds me of some sort of prison kitchen:

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

We made some changes when we moved in three years ago, mostly just cosmetic. We painted the cabinets white and the walls a soft yellow. We freaked out about the complete lack of storage and scrounged up a bookshelf and a metal pantry from the basement, which were painted and cleaned. But the swanky floor, the ancient (cute but frustrating) stove, and the gold-speckled laminate still remain.

I will save the current pictures of the kitchen for later because I know you�ll spend a sleepless night dreaming of what my kitchen might look like now. The truth is, it looks a hell of a lot better than those pictures above, but when I�m done with our Ikea remodel, it will be glorious.

Later, taters!

emiloo at 12:32 p.m.