Overall, I'm extremely pleased with the kitchen, but as with most things, hindsight is 20/20 and there are a couple of things I would probably have done differently. The biggest thing is that the refrigerator area lost about 3 inches between the plans and the actual building. Because of this, when you open the freezer door, it bangs into the wall. Plus you can't really open it all the way which will be a problem should I ever need to pull out the bins, etc to clean. Knowing me, that won't happen often. The other thing I would like to have changed is that the refrigerator door bangs into the dishwasher door if it's open at the same time. This could all have been alleviated if only I had chosen a top/bottom fridge/freezer instead of a side by side. But it wasn't supposed to be this way so there was no way to know that. I also would have gotten an electrical outlet in the utility closet in the laundry area. I'm going to have it put in because you need a place to charge up the little hand held vacuum and stuff. Speaking of electrical, I would most likely have gotten the dimmer switches over by the desk instead of by the dining area. It's a tiny thing but I tend to use the ones by the desk more and I like to have all of the switches either up or down. It's a stupid thing but it's my ocd tendencies!
Probably the biggest thing is that I might have gotten tile in the kitchen area instead of wood had we known that there was going to be a threshold in the floor the way there is. See, another thing that couldn't have been helped. Really, the only reason I would rather have less wood is because the dog is going to wreck it with his stupid nails. He can't walk without spazzing out and he digs his toes in and makes scratches. Lots of scratches. We will have to save up so that when he dies we can have the floors refinished the next day. The living room is so bad I finally had to take stain on some qtips and paint the deep scratches because they were so unsightly. I was thinking of getting a runner in the kitchen but it's likely he would wreck that or I'll get it all greasy from cooking. Hard to say. I love the wood though and I hate cleaning grout so it's probably all for the best.
Anyway, here are some pictures from the real camera:
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| This is what you see when you walk in through the dining room and pantry area |
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| If you turned around, this is what you would have just walked through. Pantry on the right, powder room on the left. |
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| This is the family room. The coffee table is temporary but will probably still be there next year. |
Someday I'll hang up the pictures. It's such a committment.
