A Post About Kitchens.

Today we went & paid for our new kitchen.  In a perfect world my kitchen would be a pristine white with pale robin's egg blue, teal & aqua accents, a marvelous marble benchtop & glass fronted cabinets to display lovely willoware china.

Alas.  I do not live in a perfect world.  In no time at all we would smash the glass fronts from banging them shut too hard, stain the marble with beetroot juice & break all our glasses dropping them on the bench. *sigh* I would be gripping about how hard the glass was to clean & how the white showed up every little stain. I know.  I had a lovely kitchen but after 30 years of my children & my children's friends ~ all of whom learnt to cook in it~ it hardly deserves the name kitchen anymore. It is warped & buckled & most of the doors are missing. I had short children; they stood on drawers & cupboard doors in order to make themselves taller so they could reach. *sigh*

And I've learnt some things about myself over the years.  I hate housework.  I really, really do.  I am prepared to sacrifice *pretty* for practical, functional, easy maintenance if it means less work.  Besides my idea of *decorating* is random jugs & jars with sprigs of this & that growing wildly in them. Sometimes I scare me by how like my Aunty Shirley I am. Books & plants. Very little else in this world matters.

So.our basic layout remains the same. No overhead cupboards to tempt those of us who are vertically challenged to climb to unprecedented heights. No corner cupboards for things to disappear in & die. This will give us dead corners but I can live with that. A proper oven tower with space for a microwave ~ which we also bought today. Three big sets of draws & a cabinet under the sink. No dishwasher.  I think they are filthy things. Ick! Our present pantry will be slighlty altered to save on cost but as there is nothing really wrong with it I can't see why we should spend money on a new one.

We have pine paneled walls.  Almost anything goes with that so although I adored the rich European Cherry benchtops with their warm, deep hues practically had to win out as the cherry was 10 X more than the Alder.  The Alder is sort of like this:

The cupboards are plain, unadorned antique white & I am assured they are really practical & easy to wipe clean. I have chosen discreet grip handles to discourage our newest little addition who promises to be more like his father than not & his father climbed everything climbable & quite a bit that wasn't!

I am not looking forward to the rip, tearing, bust but a working kitchen again will be absolutely wonderful!