It’s a wet and cold Martin Luther King Day, and I have spent the day making the El Granada Project books and files all neat and tidy. Time for a little fun. Back in 2004, after making Cell Block 49 have a little more curb appeal, we turned our compulsive fixer-upper energy to the kitchen. Below are some nice before-and-after shots of this effort, and the story follows just beneath.
As you can see from the "before" pictures, the kitchen was pretty dysfunctional. Actually, though, the "before" state represented significant improvment from when we first moved in. Initially, the kitchen lacked the bar area with the two stools, and there was a door blocking it off from the rest of the area. Ugh! We took off the door, added some paint on the inside of the cottage, put up the formica bar/counter, and added lots of storage with the shelves and hooks for the pots. The real pain was the sink area. The kitchen had the kind of sink that you–if you are my age–would spot in your grandma’s kitchen. It was single, very shallow, and had a drain the size of a bar sink and no trap. Between the sink and lack of counter space, cooking in the kitchen was really a pain, and since Chris and I like to cook, we thought remodeling worth the effort.
Of course, once we started, we didn’t know we’d have to eat out of the microwave and clean up all dishes in the bathroom for the duration of the project!