updating the kitchen, again....

Last year, I worked very hard on updating our kitchen by adding details to the island, building taller cabinets, adding lights, painting the cabinets white, and adding a baking area.

Well I thought I was done but I was wrong! Our microwave died, so we were left with a conundrum: replace it or remove it. We had already tried to come up with a new location a while ago, and it had not been successful. But then "Young House Love" blogged about their pantry update, and it was exactly what we were looking for. But before we could relocate a microwave to the pantry, we needed better doors to our pantry, we already had an electrical outlet there. Well I found the perfect post for this on 2 Little Superheroes Danielle changed her bi-fold doors to French doors. I followed her tutorial and our hard to access pantry became  the perfect location for a microwave. We purchased a white simple microwave (so much cheaper than over range microwave!) and tried it out for a few weeks. It was perfect, easy access with the new doors, great level for the kids.

But we lost an entire shelf of storage in our little pantry, so I made a little one about 6 inch deep to store the can food. We usually only have a few, so we do not need a lot of space. I also decided to keep the wire shelves, even if I am not a huge fan, it is perfect to let the heat of the microwave escape. The added shelf is made of a piece of 1 X 6 pine, painted glossy white like the rest of the pantry. It was previously some sort of dirty yellow, but nothing beats glossy white, clean and bright.

The top shelf is for baking supplies, I love baking and need many different kinds of flour  (plain, whole wheat, rye, bread, almond meal, semolina....) and different kinds of sugar,  so they need their own shelf! Below is the mini shelf for canned food, like black beans, garbanzo beans, some French delicacies,  a odd can of tomatoes (I like to buy fresh tomatoes and make my own sauce)  and green beans (same thing fresh or frozen is better!) Then we have the pasta, bread, couscous, chips,  ramen (it is a food group at our house!). Below the microwave, it is our breakfast shelf, everybody likes different king of cereals, so there are always a lot of choices, we also store there crackers and dry fruits. The bottom of the pantry is reserve for the huge bag of rice, the dog food, the potatoes and any large box of food we have around. It fits quite well altogether,  and with the extra shelf we have an easy time accessing the can goods, they also stacked better on a solid shelf than on the wire shelf!

While we are very pleased with the microwave relocating, I am way less pleased with the ugliness left above the stove! So I patched up the hole on the wall, it is less scary, but still not pretty.

But there is a lot more work to be done: install a hood, paint the bottom of the cabinets that were hidden by the microwave, install some molding at the bottom of the same cabinet to tie in with the rest and tile the back splash. It seems like a long list, hopefully it will get done before Thanksgiving!
Happy day!