My NEW kitchen

I was hoping our kitchen remodeling project  would be 100% completed before I posted any photos, but we're still waiting for the finishing touch, the crown moulding at the top of the cabinets, to be installed, and I don't want to postpone sharing these photos any longer.

So here's my new kitchen! I love it.

It all started when we realized we needed to replace the sink. It was a cast-iron sink with a ceramic glaze, and some of the glaze had cracked and chipped away, revealing rusty iron beneath it.

Ken said if we were going to replace the sink, then we might as well replace the vinyl flooring and put in hardwood, which I'd often said I'd like some day.

Then he said if we're going to replace the flooring, we might as well replace the cabinets while we're at it. I balked at this, because the former cabinets were only 12 years old, but I'd often wished I'd chosen white cabinets instead of stained hickory....

Then I said if we're replacing the cabinets, why not install granite counter tops, which we've both dreamed about....

And the old hutch? It had no windows in the doors, and I wanted an area to display my collection of Watt Ware....

We got an estimate on having the kitchen design center also build us a hutch, but once we heard the cost of doing so, we decided we might as well go to a furniture store and purchase a hutch. This one was made not only in the USA, but practically next door in Massachusetts, for crying out loud. (How Ken and I managed to get the top half of the hutch positioned over the bottom half, without creating a disaster, is a story for another time. Those hutch sections are extremely heavy.)

Oh, and we also replaced the plain kitchen window with a bay window. I've been wanting a bay there since before we built this house. I now have a place to display flowering plants, start seedlings in the spring, and put up a small Christmas tree in December.

So that's how my new kitchen came to be. Preparing meals and baking are now a treat with so much
s-p-a-c-e to work in.