More home improvement before photos

Here are additional photos from our kitchen. Read more about this in the previous post.

This photo is from the breakfast/laundry area (back of the house) looking thru to the dining room.

Notice more honey-oak cabinets. When Matt bought the house (about a decade ago), the walls had a faux-southwest-motif. He changed that to this lovely butter yellow color (from Restoration Hardware) before we got married.

There are only a few things I like in this photo:

1. The flowers. They're clearly not there all the time. :)
2. The framed pictures on the wall behind the flowers. That frame was a gift from a really nice guy who played on Matt's softball team and is part of our church. I put in close-ups of bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush (red), and some random yellow flower from our honeymoon.
3. The containers over the stove (clear glass with metal tops - from my parents).
4. The abundance of kitchen equipment. Turns out that Matt & I both enjoy cooking from scratch, so we use the blender/food processor/knives/etc. a lot.
   

What I don't like:

1. The original-to-the-house stove, which is hard to clean, and lacks today's bells & whistles. The thing refuses to die, however, so it's still here.
2. The cabinets & counter. I wish the cabinets went to the ceiling, so there'd be a little more storage (for infrequently-used items). I wish the counter were some other material. I'm not totally against laminate, but I am against bad laminate like this.

This photo is looking from near the stove towards the sink. Seeing it this way reminds me that I need to straighten the magnets on the fridge again!

What I like here:

1. Dishwasher. It's a Bosch and cleans well (though you have to clean it every couple of months to avoid it smelling funny). We got it scratch-and-dent at Sears, for a fraction of the price. I can't tell where the dent is anymore.
2. The pictures of friends & family & vacation spots on the fridge.

What I don't like here:

1. The side-by-side fridge. Not good for holding pizza boxes or large trays.
2. The fact that so much stuff sits out (i.e the cooking wine we use maybe twice a year). Normally, the island would be covered as well as the counter & top of fridge.
   

Final photo for today. This one is looking from the dining room door towards the back of the house.

The doors behind the island are a built-in-pantry. It provides almost all of our food storage, so in that realm, I love it. However, it's not built for efficiency (many regular-size bottles/cans/boxes don't fit).

The white door to the left is the half-bath (the bathroom we've been doing all the work to). Next to the half-bath door (out of this picture) is the living room.

The microwave sits on the counter, occupying maybe 10% of our counter space. It would be nice to have one that's integrated with the stove hood, to save space.




We're not re-doing the entire kitchen right now, just installing some new lights today. But, we hope to someday work on the kitchen - so I figured it was good to capture true "before" photos.