May 24, 2010
larsinnh
kitchen, organizing
Rubbermaid Premier
I decided it was time to clean out my plastic containers. Some of them were old, old, old and not sealing very well. We did some research and settled on a set of Rubbermaid Premier containers. These can be purchased at Target. I love them! We bought a set of 20 and purchased a few extra large pieces separately. These pieces are very sturdy, they resist stains and odors, and seal very well.
No, I’m not being paid to talk about this, I just love these!
I decided to clean out this cabinet and put my new containers here. I love how they nest for easy storage. My old containers didn’t nest very well, and would spill all over the place. I’m still working on the two shelves above this.
Do you have a cabinet with containers that needs to be cleaned out? You may simply need to clean out and organize your drawer or cabinet. If you are in the market for new food containers though, I highly recommend these.
The “plastic food container” part of a kitchen always seems to be the worst area. If yours needs help, see what you can do in 15 minutes…ready, set, go!
May 22, 2010
larsinnh
kitchen
messy kitchen, organized kitchen
…my kitchen doesn’t always look like this:
Here’s what it looked like today, because I JUST didn’t feel like cleaning up after breakfast. OR lunch. And then of course it got worse after dinner time.
I did put the tomato and some other food away. But the dishes? Meh. I’ll do ‘em later…
February 15, 2010
larsinnh
365 Days of Decluttering, kitchen
decluttering
Kitchens seem to be the room in the house that need the most organizing. When Handy Man pulled apart our kitchen, I had to stack allllll of our kitchen stuff in another room. I thought I had gone through and decluttered the kitchen pretty well, but WOW! What huge piles! When the kitchen was finished and I had to move everything back, I took the opportunity to go through everything. Again.
I donated items that I could live without, and tried to put things back in a way that made more sense. One of the things that helped to store my baking pans was this wooden gadget, shown above. I had seen something similar in a magazine, and told Handy Man that I wanted one for my baking sheets and pans in one of our cabinets. What a difference it made! It’s so much easier to take out items when I need them. Handy Man even made the system flexible, so I could remove sections to make them larger or smaller.
If you have a Handy Person in your house, perhaps you could ask them to make one for you. Or, see if you can find something similar online. Even if you don’t have the best storage in your kitchen cabinets, try a little rearranging. Take out the contents of one drawer or cabinet, go through everything, and put back only what you use. Even the smallest kitchen can be a big decluttering job, so don’t try to do this all at once. Take out one or two drawers, declutter a bit, and put things back. You can work on it over the course of a few weeks, if you need to. Put “like” things with “like”, get rid of things you haven’t used in a while, and put things back.
Anyone else need a kitchen declutter?
February 5, 2010
larsinnh
before & after, kitchen
kitchen renovation
Today is the day that I’m going to share the mostly done, “After” photos of our kitchen. I say mostly done because while it looks just fine, there is one more area that we will work on as funds allow. More on that, below. (To see other “before” and “during construction” photos of the kitchen, you can click on the Before & After Category, to the right.)
Introducing: the refrigerator…which was already there, but now the side panel of bead board has been installed and painted:
Now the “false” front drawers that were under the original sink have been built, painted and installed:
This is where the sink was relocated to, and the window added. Notice that the dishwasher has been relocated to the left of the sink:
To the left of the sink area, here is where the stove was relocated:
The wall area above this section is pretty nekkid, and that’s where eventually Handy Man will be doing more work. He is going to build some upper cabinets that go with the bottom ones. We have ideas on how we want them to look, including: more bead board, and glass-front doors to show some of our vintage Fiesta Ware collection. You can see the bottom of a white shelf in this photo; we have been working on arranging some objects on two shelves above the stove, but I’m not ready to show those just yet. They are a work in progress, and just a “filler of blank space” until we can get the upper cabinets built.
Overall view from way back:
We are very happy with how it came out. Anyone care to remember where our kitchen started from?
Neither would we.
Now…let’s never speak of it AGAIN.
January 28, 2010
larsinnh
before & after, kitchen, renovations
kitchen renovation
Back to the kitchen renovation. You can click on the “kitchen” category to the right to see more photos, and I’ll be expanding and updating the “Before and After” page to add these photos eventually.
As a reminder, we did our initial renovation in December of 2008. We removed everything, and laid down new wood flooring. Handy Man installed a new soffit and put the cabinets back together in a slightly new configuration. He also moved the sink. And there everything stopped, until a warm day in Spring of 2009 when Handy Man put a window into the wall above the relocated sink.
Fast forward to July 2009…when Handy Man had started painting the kitchen cabinets. He painted them a glossy white. We had white cabinets in our last house, and loved them. It brightens up the kitchen, and the glossy paint is wipe-able. (Is that a word?)
Notice the two drawers that were missing at the moment. That is because those two drawers were “false” fronts, as they were under the original sink. Handy Man took the false fronts out and built new cabinet boxes for them, so we could have drawers there. Hey, he’s not called “Handy Man” for nothing.
You’ll probably also notice that the panels on the sides of the cabinets are still bare. This was because the wood there had a very smooth finish that we decided would be difficult to paint. Handy Man decided to put some beadboard panelling over the cabinet sides, which we also painted white. It solved a problem for us and helped the cabinets to look more “finished.”
Another thing you’ll notice is that the toe-kick under the cabinets wasn’t yet painted. Hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day!
By now, the kitchen was really coming together. Just a few more minor painting details to go, and it was 95% done.
What are we planning for the other 5%? You’ll have to stay tuned for details…!
January 19, 2010
larsinnh
before & after, kitchen
In April of 2009, Handy Man broke a hole into the kitchen wall, and put up a new window. We moved some cabinets around in December 2008, but had to wait for better weather to tear a hole in the wall. Here is a reminder about the “before”:
Here is Handy Man, covered in dust. He had to take down several rows of siding, and break a huge hole in the wall for the new window. The small hole is just the beginning, he made the hole as big as the larger opening you can see here:
EEEEEk, there’s a huge hole in the wall! Thankfully, it was a nice warm day that day:
After a long day of construction work, here is the window, from the outside:
Here is the view from the inside, taken today, on a snowy day in January (since I apparently forgot to take a photo of the inside last spring!)
January 13, 2010
larsinnh
kitchen, renovations
So, after all of the hard work tearing out, rebuilding, re-flooring and re-hooking-up (I made that one up), here is one of the “After” Photos. Only, the kitchen wasn’t 100% done at this point.
I know, it looks a lot better, huh? This is just one more phase of the work. Handy Man built a new soffit (the area above the cabinets.) He moved the sink, and rearranged a few cabinets. He also moved the dishwasher to be closer to the sink. However, there was still work to be done.
See the mirror above the sink? We wanted to add a small window to the wall there…but it had to wait until spring time and warmer weather. Also, we painted the soffit and the cabinets white; but that also waited until warmer weather.
I thought I would add the mirror above the sink to reflect some light, until we could put the window in.
The stove was moved over to the left, onto this wall. I know that above this area, it looks oddly blank! However, we put two decorative shelves up above the stove and put some knick-knacks on them. During the holidays, I put Christmassy things on the shelves. Eventually, Handy Man will build upper cabinets for this area.
Pictures of the cabinets, painted white, and the new window above the sink will follow soon. I just wanted to show how we did the kitchen in stages. Part of the reason was so that we didn’t need to have the kitchen torn apart for a very long period of time. Another reason was to spread out the expenses.
One more shot of our nice, new, non-yukky floor:
Ahhhh…!!! Shiny and clean!
January 8, 2010
larsinnh
kitchen, renovations
Back to some kitchen renovation photos…here is Handy Man, starting to put in the new wood floors. He decided to put the wood flooring right over the existing vinyl. The vinyl was glued down and attached to the subfloor in such a way that it would be almost impossible to peel it up. Handy Man used 3/8″ engineered oak flooring from Lowe’s. We bought the thinner wood so that it would match up with the floor levels in the living room and the hallway, which connect to the kitchen.
I laid out some pieces, staggering the joints, and he marked them, cut them, and installed them. It was a lot of bending and crouching over, but believe me, Handy Man is used to putting in wood flooring! The rest of the house has wood flooring now, except for the two bathrooms.
Ucky vinyl I couldn’t clean, next to nice wood:
Now, this looks SO much better, doesn’t it?
After the floor was installed, it was time to start putting the kitchen back together…stay tuned!
January 1, 2010
larsinnh
before & after, kitchen, renovations
Here are some photos of our lovely kitchen in the middle of renovations. Handy Man tore everything out! He took off the counter tops, the sink, took down the kitchen cabinets, etc:
What a mess!!
Handy Man: What have I done?!?
Water had to be shut off, and the refridgerator and stove were moved into the living room. We didn’t use the stove, but we were at least able to use the fridge.
We used paper plates and cups for about 10 days. We set up a makeshift kitchen on a table, where we used the microwave and toaster oven for simple cooking. That, and some takeout food helped to get us through:
Once everything was torn out, the rebuilding could begin. The cabinets were in decent shape, so we put them back up, but in a slightly new configuration. Handy Man also put in hardwood floors.
Stay tuned for more pictures!
December 28, 2009
larsinnh
before & after, kitchen, renovations
Ok, so I’m kind of embarassed to show these “before” pictures, but here goes. Please remember that we started this the DAY after Christmas last year. There are Christmas decorations half up and half down, and Handy Man had started to bring tools out…dirty dishes were laying around and I said:
“WAIT! I have to take a BEFORE picture!” 
Now, I know what some of you might be thinking: “The before isn’t THAT bad!” However, this is a case where from “afar”, nothing looked too bad…but up close? *shudder* The ivory colored sink was scratched up and dinged beyond belief. The cabinets, while sturdy, were grimy with cooking spills that I could not get clean for the life of me. The counter top was stained, and the caulking between the backsplash and the counter was coming out. The stainless steel appliances were brand new ones that we bought when we moved in. I don’t even want to tell you how disgusting the insides of the original stove and refridgerator were! The vinyl floor was once white, but it was so scuffed up and dirty and impossible to clean…some of the seams in the vinyl floor were starting to separate…
The layout was okay but not great for us. Look at the second photo, above, again. See that section of counter top, with the microwave on it? That was actually an island, and when we moved in, that whole island was sitting smack dab in the MIDDLE of the kitchen floor. I hated that island. I know people love islands, and it seems like any kitchen that isn’t tiny has one nowadays. But I hated it. Rob also hated it; the way we cooked and moved around in the kitchen, it just didn’t work for us. It always seemed to be in the way.
So one day, Handy Man just moved it…I didn’t want to move it until we were ready to renovate the kitchen. I was convinced that it would be screwed down to the floor and that there would be all kinds of holes underneath it in the (already ugly) floor that would look horrible if we moved it. However, Rob just got TIRED of it one day, and he moved it. He shoved it against that far wall…turns out the island wasn’t even screwed or nailed to the floor at all! That definately freed up a lot ofspace in our kitchen; it seemed HUGE in there after moving the island aside. (I wish I could find some photos of the island in the middle of the kitchen, but I can’t right now. If I do find some, I’ll post them.) There were a few small holes in the floor where the island must have originally been screwed down…however, the floor was so ugly anyway, what were a few more holes, right?
I know this is kind of a cliff-hanger…but you’ll have to come back in a few days to see more!! “During” and “after” photos to come! Stay tuned…
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