Le Bois Sucré

This is a blog about learning how to cook from scratch, trying new recipes, trying to improve my cooking and baking skills. This is also a blog about stretching the dollar in this bad economy. I will bring back the "waste not want not" sensibility but without all the lima beans, casseroles and the love of mayonnaise-yuck! With the addition of access to organic eggs and my mother in law's garden we will try to do "free food meals" and other shopping challenges in expensive Stamford, CT.

Showing posts with label Cookbooks. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Kitchenplasty

My corrections of the first sketch by Rachel Stietzel
of Our House, LLC (all rights are owned by Our House, LLC)

Second sketch of the sink wall by Rachel Stietzel of Our House, LLC
(all rights are owned by Our House, LLC)

Second sketch of stove wall by Rachel Stietzel of Our House, LLC
(all rights are owned by Our House, LLC)

         For months I was editing sketches and I was trying to save money for the huge overhaul of my 1985 kitchen.. As I said in my March 30th post you never can save enough money for a kitchen remodel. There is much more than cabinets, paint, stainless shelves, granite counters, upper lighting, underneath cabinet lighting, contractors, plumbers and what is going to be your new kitchen. You need to remember to: always calculate a remodel of 0 to 15% of your house or condo's value, to budget for unexpected expenses, to have a place to store all of your items to be installed, and what you are going to do for food and refrigeration while your kitchen is a big money pit without a sink!

        Living in a 600 square foot condo and then having to store all of my kitchen items/ kitchen appliances/cabinets/doors. and two month kitchen remodel while being on night shifts was hard. But my contractor and designer Rachel and Drew Stietzel were great in the process. Rachel found space and nooks while transforming my kitchen beyond my wildest dreams. She also though outside the box and with cost saving ways as well. For an instance she put a bottom cabinet above my fridge because she knew I wanted a cabinet that stuck out as much as the fridge so that it would be used. She also suggested heavily IKEA and after looking at the competition IKEA was the best bet. Thomasville was beautiful wood cabinetry but I would have been 40% of my condo's value just on cabinets alone. I think because of her and Drew's team I was able to be a better cook and baker inspired by my new kitchen. I have room for pantry items that roll out and above my cabinets!

      There were a lot of bump and bruises on the way during our kitchenplasty. Like a Nose job or any plastic surgery before there was improvement it got ugly. Please enjoy the pictures of the updated kitchen that were mostly taken by my camera phone so I could get more of the kitchen in the shot.

Above the fridge storage for platters, baking sheets,
and cutting boards

Up close of the platters, etc above the fridge

Fridge with too many magnets!

Yeah I have been waiting for my new fridge so
I can put up all my pretty magnets.

Door to the slide out pantry

The slide out pantry. Why yes we have dog and
a huge box of milk bones!

Finishing up on the cook book nook
before the peg board came in.

The cook book nook while we were waiting to gain
back our living room but still had no sink so we could
not really use our kitchen yet because the dishwasher was not
hooked up and it is not clean if you wash it i the bath tub!

Still at one point no sink. We then got the sink and it was
too large for the original plumbing. This was
everything BUT the kitchen sink and Alanis Morissette
singing"isn't it ironic" in the background for two weeks
after the rest of the kitchen was done.

My IKEA Hjuvik faucet

My stainless steel dishwasher that actually works!

The magnet that is on my dishwasher
"Why do dishes when you can do daiquiris?"
I am so glad I no longer have to do dishes!

My Fancy glasses cabinet

Cabinet above the microwave just for pasta!

The cabinet above the coffee station

The coffee station without the coffee maker, yet.

The stove wall with the upper cabinets and microwave

The Microwave with pasta stock above it in it's own special cubby.

Before the sink came in I slowly put my kitchen stuff in the kitchen.

Welcoming the new kitchen via chalkboard... Still no sink.

Breakfast bar with the drawers open.

Right hand side of the stove wall's glass cabinets.

left hand side of the stove wall's glass cabinets.

In the rough stage the electrical strip for the kitchen. There are
more on this one strip than the number of electrical plugs in the original kitchen!

Glamour shots of the breakfast bar after completion!

This is my beautiful kitchen that might be small
but it has tons of storage and my pastry/breakfast bar!

My Sink side of the kitchen with a kitchen sink!

Inspired by Julia Child I have peg board
which soon will hang all of my cake pans!

Now that is a pretty kitchen with a spot for everything!

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

DEMO OF THE UGLY DUCKLING KITCHEN! AND BONES OF THE SWAN KITCHEN

It took about 2 hours to demo my Ugly Kitchen and about two months for the kitchen to be put back together.

When planning a kitchen demo in a small 600 square foot condo I recommend getting a small student fridge, budgeting for take out food and to plan on reducing your food in your fridge freezer to almost nothing before the renovation. I also recommend money, and lots of it!

We were not planning to do the kitchen for another month but I was luckily already packing and I did not at the time realize how much crap and lack of space I had. On the day of the renovation we midnight shifters were awakened at 7:00 am and still had so much to clear out of the kitchen. We look like drunken college students scrambling in every direction. No longer being on "normal" people hours it was so painful to be awake at the time! We started just throwing things instead of organizing them onto the table and on the floor. We wanted to just get this kitchen done and to go back to bed! The two months renovations and midnight shifts were painful. To have to be up after a long shift or to have to make decisions without much sleep is not a good idea.

I got to take down the first cabinet with a sledge hammer! That I have to say it is a liberating thing to destroy an inefficient kitchen cabinet. To totally rip the cabinet into shreds and to declare there is nothing in this kitchen that I want to keep and be able to budget to put it back together again.

There were issues that came up just in the demo. It turns out that the gas was never capped correctly before the demo (not the contractors fault but it was before the demo). So there was a gas leak luckily I noticed and they were back in an instant. The lighting guy could not come for over a week so we had an empty kitchen for over a week. Then there were just so many delays like deciding on different doors, and things not in stock. Then the counters guys could not come at one point and then there was an extra space to accommodate for the counters. Then the sink that came with the counters was actually too big for where the plumbing was... and so we started in October and a couple of weeks before Christmas we were actually using non bathroom water. We had for that period only one source of running water! So you know we did not cook even when all we were waiting for as our kitchen sink. So for two weeks when the kitchen was mostly complete except for the kitchen sink! A lot of it had to do with getting condo board with us or scheduling time to shut off the water/etc because our condo is all connected with all of the condos.

This waiting resulted in us having to live like were trying to try out for A&E's show "Hoarders" for such a long time. We just wished it was already over since we had to eat out until we got the fridge back (two or three weeks later). It was just us and a cooler and we never seemed to have cool drinks. It was worth it two months later when we got ice maker in the fridge we have now. But all I wanted was iced drinks and we could not get it.

Jonathan and I who just wanted to be in our kitchen especially as the winter holidays were upon us. We flipped through cookbooks saying-- oh that looks so good! We would drool and wish and wish.

Enjoy the pictures below and I will update with final pictures in another post.

Don't you love the Martha Stewart paint samples?

This was above the fridge and you could never get anything in or out of it!
I hate above the fridge store unless it goes out as much the fridge and has
storage like I planned for my platters/etc.

The upper cabinets that were so low that you could not wash dishes in the sink without
hitting your hands on them. Yet there was so much room ABOVE the cabinets too.

Normally if I walked into this situation I would be upset, but not today!

The fridge turns out was leaking majorly and when
we took it out it had huge puddle. If it was not for the
three layers of laminate the people downstairs would
have been in a squalor's Venice!