Our calendar was open this past weekend so Dave asked what I wanted done. He didn’t have to ask twice! There were a few things and he ended up going with painting the kitchen walls. There is more I want to do in the kitchen and this is a great start. Just having one coat of white over the beige really brightens it up. There is good light in this kitchen and though the big window over the sink is a northern exposure there is light coming in from the west from the back door and the window in what I call the kitchen nook.

One of the first things we did when we moved in was take down the awful ceiling light. There was a problem with the lights I ordered and even just having a bulb as a light source until the new light arrived was an improvement over what was there. See before photo at the end of this post. I got these retro looking light from Barn Light Electric. I love the red stems and stripes on the globes.

Dave painted the nook earlier this year.

Here is a photo we took from before we moved in. See that awful ceiling light and how this whole kitchen other than the appliances and countertop was beige. The biggest wall space is on the wall perpendicular to the fridge – on the right of this photo. There was a lot of patching to do on this wall and we had taken down that old electric heater on the wall close to the ceiling. You can barely see it in the above photo. Under it was old green paint and some old wallpaper. I looked at that for over a year! So nice to have it freshened up.

In the future I’d like to have a range – cooktop and oven together. It is nice having two ovens at holiday time but I think a warming oven would suffice. I want to move the range to an outside wall so we can vent cooking odors to the outside. I’d also like a farmhouse sink – one big one. While I’ve gotten used to the double sink I don’t like it. My wish would be to use the same cabinetry but reconfigure it. I don’t know if this is possible. When I have the money for the reno I’ll start asking around. I’d prefer a smaller island on wheels. This one is a little too big and too close to the fridge.