Kitchen Renovation: Phase I

Phase I: Before
The yellow post-it marks the cabinet that will not be used in the new kitchen.
The white notes indicate what is in each drawer.

Because this corner of the kitchen contains neither appliances nor water hook-ups, it is the logical place to start our renovation, as it will (conceivably, we hope) cause the least disruption.


We will be removing all of the cupboards shown here, widening the opening to the dining room (at left) and then building a pantry-fridge-beverage-microwave centre. Here's the plan.

Legend for Phase I:

1. New, customized pantry
2. Fridge cabinet
3. Microwave shelf and base cabinet with drawers

When it is assembled, it will be a straight line of cabinets and will look roughly like this:

The pantry on the left will be customized by Stephen, starting with a 24" pantry frame, but putting two drawers in the bottom and a combination of pull-outs and vertical storage up top.

The vertical storage is for the stepladder that currently hangs on the wall going down the basement stairs. I hate fetching it and returning it every day.

To the right of the fridge, we're thinking of mounting the microwave below the counter, but haven't really decided on that yet. The other option is to install a special microwave cabinet instead of the standard two-door cabinet.

But the biggest accomplishment of Phase I will be the widening of the opening to the dining room. It is currently 37 inches wide and will be 72 inches wide when all is said and done.

Some of you may recall that Stephen already widened that opening a little bit three Januarys ago. It was necessary to allow us to open the oven door. It is to his credit that he is willing to undertake this same project so soon.

From January 2012

And here is what the room looked like at the end of day one of phase one on January 9, 2015.

You will be able to see right through to the living room.

The garbage can is where the new pantry will go.
We've got a sheet of cheap wall paneling as an improvised countertop.
(By the way, the cabinets in the dining room are only there temporarily until they can be relocated in the kitchen.)

So far, we have not encountered many obstacles, and Stephen (and our son, Brian) have been great about restoring the kitchen to a usable condition before dinner. And the extra light from that wide opening has already lifted my feeling about the space and made me SO EXCITED!

I can also hint that there has been a small scope creep/domino effect concerning the dining room, but we'll touch on that later.