More posts on my kitchen remodel

Sooooooo...... here's the view from the kitchen into the family room when I bought my condo.......

The cabinets do a really nice job of blocking light from the family room. Don't you love the wallpaper with the black Formica and the parquet flooring? not to mention the dog food color of the counter tops!!  It's amazing to realize that someone had to actually voluntarily choose these materials, that they actually thought this looked good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I removed the hanging wall cabinets and redid EVERYTHING else.

I found the plaid rugs at Pottery Barn for a really good price. I loved how it was an unexpected pattern and how the colors were a little bit off. I felt it really warmed up the rooms, and I used them in both spaces. Knowing that they would be discontinued, and I would never be able to find them again, I bought two for the family room and three for the kitchen. Now when I have them cleaned, I switch out the extra rug for the dirty one and store the newly cleaned one when it comes home from the cleaners. These rugs were so cheap, that it costs more to clean them then the rugs cost new.

The kitchen is barely big enough for an island, but I squeezed one in anyway. If this had been for a client I never would have heard the end of how this doesn't work from a practical traffic flow point of view, but since it's for me, HAH! I love it. I WANTED AND ISLAND AND I GOT ME AN ISLAND!!!!!

I found this table at a local antique store and had my woodworker add onto the legs to lift it up to 36" high.

The table had four stretchers connecting the legs, so I had him create a shelf out of a grid work of wood.

I had a paper towel holder that I brought from my house in Watertown that I had a woodworking friend make out of antique sewing machine drawer fronts. I screwed it to the end of the table to make a great place for my towel storage.

I had found the drawers fronts years ago and bought them because the pulls were cast iron shapes of bull dog heads, and I collect dog stuff. I had them for years and years before I got the idea to make them into a paper towel holder.

I found a wonderful old green candlewick light fixture from the 30's or 40's on ebay and figured out a way to work it into my lighting plan for the kitchen.

I wanted something different for my drawer pulls. Restoration Hardware had these pulls for sale, they don't sell them anymore, probably because I was the only one who bought them.

They have real pressed flowers underneath the glass of the pull and I love the way they work with the kitchen wallpaper.

OK, my neck is killing me, sitting at this computer, so I will finish up about my kitchen in my next post. See you around!!!!!