Fall Kitchen Tour: Surrounded By Ancestors And Cottage Style

I blame the cover of an old Country Living magazine. Nothing less than seeing my dream kitchen come to life would've made me go through a couple months of remodeling hell. Cooking with a microwave, the refrigerator taking over the family room, and dealing with the dust from refinishing and laying down wood flooring. At least we did it after ManO and I became empty nesters.

I wish I could show you a before picture of my kitchen. Didn't take any. My bad. When we broke down and redid our two decades old house, worn white linoleum, cheap, splattered cabinet fronts, and counters with stains of meals gone wrong made the room an eyesore. Every single room had a different dark wall color. The Duke blue dining room led to a Robin Hood green kitchen. And then there was the built in desk no one liked to use.

But all that inconvenience was worth it. After adding wood floors, lightening the wall color to a nice Tuscan beige, putting on beadboard doors, new hardware, tile back splash and a lovely gray Corian type counter, it looks like this:

Well, I might be fibbing a little. The counters are never this clean or uncluttered.  I'm always chopping or staging or using them for a project with the grandkidlets.

When we originally built the house, we made sure one piece of furniture had a special place in the kitchen, the pie safe that ManO and his father built back the year my son was born. What I always remember is being exhausted all the time and not hearing ManO punch the copper panels in the next room. Pregnancy takes it out of a girl. 

My kitchen is decorated with family heirlooms from both sides of the family. The clock? It's from our newlywed days and reminds us where we came from!  

Everything has a purpose or is repurposed or has memories attached.

We have a regular old counter top microwave after having to repair or remove THREE over the stove appliances in the course of our thirty year marriage. The desk counter no one used has converted into deep drawers and cabinets to hold the turkey roaster, turkey platter and small appliances. All the items above are heirlooms from my grandparents, pictures of my grandparents or paintings of the family farm I visited every summer.   

Favorite spot in the kitchen:  I love standing at my sink and checking out the bird feeder and the squirrels' antics.

Favorite thing about my kitchen:We managed to create a cottage style kitchen with lots of storage, something a real centuries old cottage probably wouldn't have! And it's pretty close to that cover of Country Living I found years ago.

Favorite kitchen organizing tip: You don't see the huge pantry to the right of the cabinets and can barely see the little spice cabinet on the wall (another newlywed purchase). I make sure to keep all my spices, baking items, cereals and canned goods as far away from the heat of the stove as possible to keep them lasting longer.

So, have you ever remodeled a kitchen? What do you like best about your cooking space? What do you wish you could change?