Kitchen Remodel

So we've decided to dive into the kitchen project head first. It was time for us to finish the last big project in the house. The first step was finishing the ceiling/walls and fixing all of the water damage. You may remember from an earlier post that we moved the stairs a couple of years back, so we have a pretty big space to work with. In my mind I knew exactly what I wanted to do in this room, but when it came time to select things, I had a really hard time.

Step 1: . Fixing the fireplace. Our old fireplace was surprisingly installed incorrectly. All the vent holes were tiled over, and it was a gas fireplace that they used to burn wood. We never actually used it, the whole thing looked really scary, so we decided to just replace the thing in it's entirety.

This was totally a Bob project. He called the fireplace people, picked out the type we were getting and I basically rubber stamped the whole thing. We've got a gas burning fireplace, with radiant heater. Even though we won't use the heating function very much, it's gas heat with a battery starter and if our power goes out, it'll give us an alternate source.

So we did this back in early June and felt like we had made a huge step towards the kitchen. And not surprisingly, the fireplace has just been sitting there, unused. And for a while, a long while, our kitchen project went on hold.

Step 2: Coming up with an actual design so we could start filling in the pieces.  So we headed over to Fingerle Lumber and worked with Tom Lane to come up with a design. Below is the top down view of our space. Starting from the top of the picture:

• Door on far left is the pantry, 
• Next door is for the mud room
• Next door is for the basement
• And the french doors are for the study

You can't see the fire place in this picture. But on the bottom right, where there are the built in china cabinets, in the middle, that's where the fireplace is. So we plan on a seating area in front of the fireplace... but that's super far away.

Step 3: The kitchen tile. Oh how I hate picking out tile.