I haven’t been taking a lot of work-in-progress photos of my kitchen “remodel”, so there is a bunch of stuff that has happened in the kitchen since we first moved in that I can’t show you in pictures. Here’s a reminder of what it looked like at the start:
So far we have:
- Replaced the stove (previously we had only two burners, and two grill things, with an extractor fan that sucked down into the cabinet below)
- Replaced the oven (after I became over frustrated with propping the door closed with the broom handle)
- Replaced the dishwasher (not strictly needed but the old one was terrible, didn’t wash the dishes, and was therefore not used)
- Replaced all the halogen down lights with LEDs, including those dangling ones over the peninsula area
- Removed the old curtain valance … thing … that went round the top of the sink area windows
There are also some more recent updates that I have a lot more detail to share, so I will show you those in separate posts. Is it too much of a tease for me to leave these as a surprise?
What I will show you today are a couple of little things that make a big difference in our kitchen.
First up, we removed a large old fashioned plate rack from this wall, and replaced it with an Ikea Fintorp railing:
I am so thoroughly pleased with this change! I don’t have a picture of it before, but you can just see the edge of the wooden rack in the “before” photo above. It really dominated the area, and removing it felt very strange at first. We have also painted the overhanging roof and walls. The new colours are both Dulux: Light Rice Quarter (roof) and Warm Neutral (wall).
I really love how my old colander and the new lantern we bought after Christmas just go so well together. I’m planning to put something above the rail: maybe another rail, or a floating shelf.
Secondly, I have switched to using Castille (or Olive Oil) soap, so we are now using soap dishes all around the house. At first I was just using a lovely old dish I found in the thrift store, but it made the soap go terribly soft and was always wet. I added some pebbles to allow the soap to drain and it has been 100% perfect ever since!
We keep our eggshells, dry them out, crush them up and feed them to our chickens. This gives back some calcium that they need to make more eggs. 🙂
It may seem like a small thing, but having an effective soap dish makes a big impact when you are always washing your hands!
Simple Crafty Life 