Not actual white boards (although we do have a giant one of those gracing our living room currently). I'm referring to our kitchen cabinets. In preparation for our first home study visit one of our goals was having the dining room and blue room (which we'll be using as nursery) cleaned out (as much as possible), and one of the easiest ways to begin doing that was to assemble the rest of the cabinets to get the big bulky boxes out of there. Hooray, we did that...but unfortunately their space was promptly filled with multiple boxes of flooring, such is the way with renovations.
What we managed to get done was put up our three uppers, which really changed the look of the whole room (I'm still not 100% sure if I like the look of them haha, but I'll deal with it).
We put up a corner cabinet, which looked absolutely massive sittin' up there all by its lonesome, then we added two equally massive 24in cabinets that are connected with sliding doors. We mounted them high (24in above the counter top instead of the standard 18) for a couple reasons - we wanted to be able to use things like the mixer or coffee maker, or anything else that is tall under them. I didn't want a large space above the cabinets, because it's a bitch to clean, and I don't really have anything to decorate up there with. Also because we're planning on adding a shelf underneath the sliding door one (possibly the corner one as well) to house all our teas and coffees, and mugs that we use multiple times a day. I said before we bought them, that Jason wasn't 100% sure of going with Ikea cabinets, but after hanging the uppers, he was singing a different tune...even recommended them to people who are thinking of building some quick sale homes. Please disregard the pile of shims in that expansive opening, they're in a better home now.
Currently we only have one outlet in that area (beside the sink) so there's a power bar on the microwave that runs them all (only one at a time though, mind you. It's frustrating) The pantry door still distracts me every time I walk by, it's like a white board just asking to be written on. I thought Jason was going to going to blow a gasket trying to put on that door haha. He lost all respect for Ikea at this point, because they don't really give you any sort of guide to attach the door to the drawers. The door is attached to two drawers and pulls out, then you can pull out the other three drawers that are in there. Sorry I forgot to take a picture of how it functions. You have to be very precise with your measurements, then screw on these clip things that snap into the drawers. As I mentioned before with the whole drywall cutting fiasco, Jason isn't the greatest at super exact measurements, so he was anxious he'd mess it up. It took a while, and a fair amount of standing staring at it before we got it figured out. The space between the pantry and the cabinet is only 9in, not large enough for another cabinet, so we're going to build a bottle rack. It's going to go from the counter to the same height as the uppers. It will serve two purposes, to fill the gap between, as well as to cover the gap behind the pantry (since it has to stick out further due to duct work we had to run upstairs).
Looking at these picture makes it seem so cluttered, oh how I dream of the day when things are complete and everything has a home. (I have tried to put the cereal away somewhere, but Jason always just ends up putting it on top of the fridge, I think he's afraid Kai will get at it, she loves Cheerios) As you can see the space on either side of the window isn't the same, we'll most likely add some open shelving to the left, to help balance it a bit. Some freakin' trim might help too, yeesh.
On to the other side of the kitchen now. These two friends had been sitting half done for a while, they were desperate for some love. The one on the right was easy peasy, we basically just had to attach the doors. The corner one was a bit more complicated.
It's got these swing/pull out carousel things that make it a functional corner cabinet, versus the usual on all fours with your head stuck in it trying desperately to reach that damn pot that you need, but your arm it just that much too short, cursing yourself for even putting it all the way back there in the first place. We've all been there. So I was happy to get something with a pull out function. This cabinet, while being large (just over 4ft) was relatively easy to assemble, the the pull out function had a ton of parts but was also pretty easy to put in. Although, Jason did feel a little cramped shoved in there, and I quote, "Who the hell designed this!? Oh, I know, someone without shoulders!" He's always good for a laugh. We still have to build them up and mount them, but unfortunately we can do that until the outlet beside the stove gets moved up about 10in. It's seriously just floating there in the middle of the wall.
We were hoping to get the floor in there before we had our home visit, but we're picking our battles haha, there was just too much to do. Once she comes though, we've got a long list of things we will have to get done before she comes back, and the kitchen floor is definitely one of them.
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