Introducing a new blog category: kitchen renovation

Kitchens are important to me. And since I'm cooking in my tenth kitchen now (including my parents' houses, college apartments, and all the houses and apartments since then), I really understand how much the design of a kitchen influences its ability to make cooking easier and more fun.

I spent my formative years living in a house where my father had to lean forward in his chair so my mother could open the oven door, and another where you have to stand on your head in order to reach any of the pots and pans that aren't hanging from the forehead-gashing pot rack. My mother has spent the last 40 years cursing her kitchen three times a day, and I don't want to end up in the same boat.

So while our previous houses have all had something wrong with them (wet basement, old wiring, leaky front door, eight raccoons living under the deck), they were all carefully selected for their decent kitchens. Nothing along the lines of what shows up in the cabinet catalogs, mind you, just a room that was large enough to cook in and was laid out by someone who had actually cooked at least once in his life. Large enough that at least two people could cook at once, and with enough room for a few extra people to mill around during parties.

Except now I've got a crappy kitchen. It's sufficient ... if you're cooking by yourself, for no more than about three people, and no one attempts to enter the kitchen while you're in the trenches. A list of my woes:

• The bifold pantry door obscures about 1/3 of the pantry contents even when it's fully open, and any other type of door would either obscure the main door to the kitchen, or do nothing to actually close off the pantry from prying little cookie-seekers.
• I have only three drawers in the kitchen, and one of them can only be opened when the dishwasher door is down.
• I have two sets of lower cabinets (other than the under-sink cabinet), one of which I can't access unless the dishwasher door is shut, and it's a blind corner cabinet so I have to actually lay down on the floor and stick my upper torso into the cabinet in order to reach the stuff in the back. That's where the food processor and waffle iron live, so don't expect to eat homemade mayonnaise or waffles when you visit.
• The dishwasher door sticks shut, requiring two hands and superhuman grip strength to open it ... so we do that as infrequently as possible, which means dishes pile up on the counter and in the sink.
• Speaking of counters, have I mentioned that they're faux-finished laminate from approximately 1979? And that any liquid left on the surface for more than 15 minutes leaves a white spot that takes upwards of a day to fade? And I have only seven linear feet of counterspace, plus one largely useless corner?
• The cabinets are most likely the original 1979 model, refaced in a boring-but-marginally-acceptable oak-look laminate. The shelves aren't adjustable, and because of the layout of the kitchen, only one set has doors that are wider than 11". I have to tilt all of my serving pieces and casserole dishes to get them into the cabinets, and I lose the last 1' of space in the blind corner because I'm just not going to kill myself to store stuff back there.
• The stove opens into the path of the other doorway to the kitchen, the 30"-wide door that leads to the dining room and the back porch. So when we have guests over for dinner or a barbecue, people are constantly trying to squeak around behind me to help set the table and get the food served. And even when it's just the three of us, Liza is always underfoot, and someday she's going to come racing around the corner and run smack into the open oven door.
• Despite my wonderful upholstery job, the built-in benches are still uncomfortable, and the table takes up way too much room in the kitchen. But without the benches, the only table that would fit in the space would be a 2-person cafe table, which would be beyond useless.
• There is so little storage space in the kitchen that I have an entire closet of shelves in the lower level of the house full of the kitchen gadgets that get used once a month or less. Turkey roasting pan? Ravioli maker? Rolling pin and cookie cutters? Meat thermometer? All in the "Closet of Useless Kitchen Items I Refuse To Throw Out Because I Really Do Need Them Twice A Year."
• The one overhead light fixture is too wimpy to suffice for lighting the whole kitchen, so in order to actually see what I'm doing I have to turn on the overhead, the sink light, the light on the stove, the under-cabinet light I installed, and the light that's built into our under-cabinet CD player. Stupid dark green countertop sucks all the light right out of the universe.
• The tile backsplash is painted. White. Come on ... I can't live like this.
• And did I mention that the room is about 10'x10' with two doors in it?

Since it looks like Jason is happy in his work and in no mood to move across the country anytime soon, we're thinking it's probably best to fix the kitchen before it causes major scars in my psyche (or my child's face when she pitches headfirst into the oven). We've got a huge pile of brochures from Lowe's and Home Depot, and I checked a dozen kitchen renovation books out of the library while my mother was here a few weeks ago. I've got scale drawings of my kitchen and dining room littering every flat surface in the house, with potential arrangements of appliances sketched in, crossed out, scribbled on by Liza, and resketched. I've got a subscription to Angie's List and have identified a half-dozen kitchen design companies and contractors I want to talk to. I've got the National Kitchen and Bath Association website bookmarked, along with their list of guidelines for good kitchen design. I've identified our rough budget, which can be summarized as "enough to buy new cabinets and countertops, but not enough to put an addition onto the back of the house to actually fix the problem, an investment which we would never be able to recoup in this neighborhood anyway." I have wandered aimlessly in the tile section of Home Depot, taking photos with my cell phone of things I like (mainly the cool glass tiles, mixed with marble or slate as a border ... like this only without the green, will post pics another night).

We're pretty sure that whatever the final design, it's going to involve ripping out a wall (maybe two) and adding as much counterspace as I can shoehorn into the room. The oven will NOT open right in front of a doorway, and none of the appliances will interfere with the workings of the cabinet doors. If at all possible, I WILL replace my clunky pantry with one of those slick cabinets with the pull-out shelves and rotating thingees and other doodads, if it isn't going to cost me 1/4 of my budget to do so. Other than that, I'm open.

Since this is a project that's going to consume ever bit of energy I don't commit to my kid or my quilting, you're going to be hearing a lot about it. Even if we don't do most of the work ourselves (and unless a full-time babysitter who works for cheap falls into my lap, that's not going to happen), it's still going to mean months of details and shopping and agonizing over decisions I'm going to have to live with for the next decade or two. Which is a new situation for me ... all of our other houses have been temporary, and we've always known it, so any decisions we made we knew we only had to live with for a few years. But if I spend $20K and get it wrong, I'm going to have to live with it for a while this time, which is scary.

Jason pointed out to me today that for what we're talking about spending on the kitchen, I could buy a new car to replace the 2000 Venture that's starting to rust out at the bottom and is due for something expensive to go kablooey sometime soon. But the car works, and I don't hate it, and I do hate the kitchen, so guess where the money's going?

So this is fair warning that you're going to be seing a lot of kitchen talk over the next few months. If anyone has been through a complete gut-it-and-replace-it kitchen remodel, I'd love to hear any tips you have.