I love to cook. I love to socialize while I cook. My husband does dishes, often while I cook. We need a kitchen large enough to handle a cook and a (human) dishwasher, plus somewhere for conversation partners to sit.
For a house with a surfeit of doors, the kitchen is door-free. There's an opening from the hallway and another from the dining room. There are two pantry-closets just outside the kitchen. There's also the row of cabinets that separates the living room and stairs from the dining room and kitchen hall.
It's also one of the only rooms without horrible carpeting. There's some dark laminate in great condition, probably recently installed. I'm not fond of laminate -- I'd like to replace it with cork -- but it's in great shape so it can stay.
I'm standing in the east end of the kitchen looking out the west windows. The dining room is behind me. Just visible in profile on the left is the double wall oven (pretty new) and laundry machines.
Here's another view of the ovens and laundry. I love the cabinets above and below the ovens, and above the laundry. This part of the kitchen is wood paneling in big sheets, not parquet.
On the left near the bottom, you can see the dishwasher cracked open. After four years without a mechanical dishwasher, my husband requested that the new house should have one.
The fridge is new. Two weeks after the sellers accepted our offer, their fridge died. So they bought a new one. It still smells like new fridge inside. My family is thrilled that we can get water and ice from the door.
Another view of the side. This wall is boring square white tile, unobjectionable but also without character. There's a bank of 4 windows above the sink, 2 over 2 with awning style openings like most of the windows in the house. On the right, the edge of the fridge. On the far left, the range. All the appliances in here are pretty new (only the fridge is amazingly new).
You can see we moved the microwave out of the corner with the pass-thru and into the area next to the sink. The house came with a microwave. We haven't had one in 4 years and barely used the one we had before that, so I don't know if it's worth it to keep one now. Seems a waste to keep it in the pass-thru, but I don't like it next to the sink and the other end of the counter has some shelves in the corner (below).
The cabinets are original and plentiful, a honey varnished plywood with simple nickel pulls. The set under the windows (above left) is probably my favorite. They're 6" deep, perfect for a pantry. No wasted space in here! The cabinet under the sink has a bit of waterstaining on the front of the wood, but most of these are in great condition. There are also a lot of drawers. This is a big deal because our current kitchen only has two drawers.
The fan above the range (above, the circle on the wall) is probably original. If not original, then a very good reproduction of MCM style.
View across the table to the dishwasher. The vertical bar on the right is the fridge, and beyond the wall on the left is the ovens. The table is placed between the opening to the dining room and the hallway behind the stairs, and has walls on either end and a light above it. It sits 4 generously. We're going to put stools there to make it easier to pass back and forth.
This house has a bonus half-kitchen downstairs in the artists' studio. Sink, counter, fridge. No range. The quality here is markedly lower than in the real kitchen: older appliances, cheaper sink and faucet, MDF builder-grade cabinets instead of custom wood, etc. Maybe this can be the home for the microwave? The studio is a separate post, so more details on that space will go there.
That studio apartment is for guests, then later, for teenagers. In the meantime, for knitting, sewing, crafts and quiet.
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