GE Third Rack Dishwasher

Life with Smuffy (Special Episode – Part 8):  “Smuffy’s 99% Kitchen!”

~ Midwest Storyteller ~ 1 Comment

This was to be my real “TAH-DAH!” moment, complete with video tour, but for some reason my six-minute video refuses to load to my computer. Others have, but no, not this one. I started to get into my “I’ll conquer this one” mode and then remembered how I am trying to simplify my life after being held hostage by this kitchen for so long and gave up. Photos will have to do.

We are 99% finished with Smuffy’s grand kitchen makeover! It’s been a long, long road – years in fact. I won’t count them because every time I do it makes me cry.

Here are some photos of how things turned out.  Due to the lighting, the cabinetry appears at times to be more yellow than it actually is. They are a creamy white with antiquing.  Actual paint colors, along with the process are explained in the links below that cover the journey through this whole process, so be sure to click on those to see the “before” photos to appreciate what miracle Smuffy performed and the “during” photos to see what we endured!

I’m sure if you look closely, you’ll see areas in the trim and such that still need a little work. I’m happy to say that most of those are completed now. I just keep telling Smuffy that I’d like to have the final touches all finished before something actually breaks.

This photo is a straight shot of the kitchen through the double archway of the dining room.  I wanted a homey look where I could display some of my farmy and shabby family heirlooms without them looking out of place.  I think I’ve achieved a look I won’t get tired of anytime soon. The sink base is my design. All the beautiful walnut backsplash is from a tree Smuffy dragged home from the woods and he did the whole thing himself. I chose to add travertine tile down the middle as an accent. I think it’s the highlight of my new kitchen. That, and the furniture-style sink base cabinet which I got to use my artistic talents on. All the cabinets and pull-outs are designed by me and built by Smuffy from scratch and the painting and antiquing is all done by me. Since this photo, the pull-outs you see through the mesh doors have received a dark wood tone so they now “disappear” into the recesses. Did I mention that Smuffy replaced the windows and added all the beautiful framing on them? Yes, he’s pooped. As you can see, Phoebe June is nodding off because this story isn’t about her.

Kitchen Wall with Sinkbase www.midweststoryteller.com

This is a look at the east wall where you can see Smuffy’s custom pantry and the roomy drawers he built.  I love this door which is actually a casement window out of an old house that we stumbled across in an antique mall.  Smuffy made all the adjustable U-shaped shelves and I wallpapered the inside of the pantry. Getting all the shelves and contents in there just right took me an entire day! The pendant light you see here is my mom’s old milk strainer from down on the farm.

Vintage Window Pantry Door www.midweststoryteller.com
Walnut Backsplash www.midweststoryteller.com

Here’s the west wall with the refrigerator, wall oven and dishwasher.  Not many people put their wall oven above their dishwasher, but necessity is the mother of invention, is it not?  I almost wore a hole in my graph paper trying to figure out the appliance placement problem.  There ended up being a compromise between my grand design and Smuffy’s “do you want me to be 105 when I finish this kitchen?” exclamation and that pitiful puppy dog look in his eyes.  At the far end of this west wall is valuable counter space with Phoebe June’s Diner below and cookbook shelving above.  This is a fabulous step up considering this area used to be an exit to the side entry of the house, making it unusable as kitchen space. I have the doors closed in the photo, but above the wall oven is a fabulous built-in Smuffy made which has square cubbyholes that can hold rolling pins, bottles, drying mats and such and above those are tall slots for all the cookie sheets and baking pans. Being a tall cook, having all that up there is perfect for me.

Smuffy's Kitchen www.midweststoryteller.com

Here’s how things look at night when I can turn off the ceiling light (and yes, that is a “fandelier” up there, but somehow it looks way oversized in the photo) and turn on Smuffy’s under-cabinet lights along with the lighted glass upper cabinets.  He has those all wired to switches just as he’s done in the pantry so that not only makes the kitchen look really nice at night, but also spotlights the work areas!  I must also brag on another of his hand-made pendant lights.  I handed him the old pulley from our barn along with my mom’s old colander and showed him a ton of Pinterest pictures.  I think they turned out great and I think Mom would approve of both her contributions to lighting. Smuffy also made the walnut shelving you see on each side of the window. On there you can see the little blue metal box which is my mom’s lunch pail from her one-room schoolhouse days. Also on display are my grandma’s butter churn and mom’s old cookie jar. That little mug goes way back also. I remember being so little I could hardly lift it to drink from it.

Under cabinet lighting www.midweststoryteller.com

My kitchen is a working kitchen. Practicing clean eating and being a certified coach with Trim Healthy Mama means daily meals prepared from scratch. The counterspace I gained has made a huge difference and oh! the joys of getting to have a gas cooktop! I also chose a dishwasher with bottle jets and a third rack and am asking myself where this marvel has been all my life. And the refrigerator! I hear a lot of folks complaining about Samsung refrigerators and felt squeamish about getting one, but when I saw this baby with French doors on both top and bottom, the design won me over. Plus, the lower right freezer section is “flex” and a push of the button transforms this from freezer to refrigerator and back again! I said a prayer when I ordered it that God would send me a peach and not a lemon. We purchased it locally so we could have hometown service on it and a good service plan and we’ve been happy with it.

Smuffy does more than just build things.  My Life With Smuffy page is loaded with stories that will make you laugh, cause your hair to stand on end and probably bump us up to the top of your prayer list!

The kitchen makeover chronicles include my embarrassing “before” photos in “Death of a Kitchen”.  After that, you can catch up with “A Glimmer of Hope and Stainless Steel”, “Birth Pains of a Kitchen”, “My Not-A-Kitchen Kitchen”, “A Trim Healthy Pantry and Some Plywood” and “Transition of a Kitchen”.  Be sure to check those out.

Leave a comment!  I’d love to know what you think of what our efforts have wrought and hear your thoughts after seeing the “before” and “after” photos.  Are you planning a kitchen remodel?  What great ideas are cooking in your brain for design and function?

Life with Smuffy (Special Episode – Part 2 of ?): “A Glimmer of Hope and Stainless Steel”

~ Midwest Storyteller ~ 4 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving!

We have so much to be thankful for around here and I’m sure you’re probably feeling the same way. A couple of years ago Thanksgiving came along amidst a period of grief, but it came along anyway and we paused to give thanks for those we could still hold close.

This year, we are simply giddy, for as I’ve already announced here, Smuffy and I are about to become grandparents and that is enough to hoist our thankfulness quotient up several notches all by itself!

For me, today is also a great day to rejoice in the progress of Smuffy’s custom kitchen makeover project, because even though in the grand scheme of life it can’t compare to what really matters – the Lord who gives graciously, our family, dear friends and a place to call home – every little step in the right direction certainly makes life easier!

I’m thrilled to say that three new appliances are installed! I’ll give more detailed reviews on those later, but I can’t even express how much simpler and easier the Thanksgiving meal preparations have been since this phase of the project has occurred.

As you can see below, refrigerator, oven and dishwasher are in place, although surrounding cabinetry and trim are not.

Appliances Phase 1 www.midweststoryteller.com

This new Samsung 4-Door Flex French Door Refrigerator is a dream and I love being able to have French doors, slide out shelves and drawers on the bottom as well as for the refrigerator on top. The right side of the lower french doors is a separate flex unit that can be used as a refrigerator or a freezer, depending on the need. For us, it will be used as a freezer most of the time. It’s lots bigger than our old refrigerator and so nice inside that if it wasn’t so cold in there, I might move in

The GE dishwasher with its bottle jets and, yes, third rack, is just fabulous. My advice would be that if you are ever shopping for a dishwasher, don’t settle for one without these two features. Where has this been all my life? I think they finally must be letting women design appliances.

The thing I love most about my Kenmore Elite wall oven is that it is not in the basement. Earlier, I shared here in Death of a Kitchen, how our appliances marched off single file to the graveyard, beginning with my oven. However, until Smuffy got the kitchen to the place where some cabinets could come out to make room for a wall oven to go in, my new oven had to wait, ratchet strapped to his workbench in the basement.

There is much more to glory in today than new appliances, but I am truly thankful for them, especially the part where I don’t have to haul this turkey down and back up the stairs!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. Hug the ones you love and tell them how much they mean to you. It is a wonderful life and we have so much to be thankful for.

I’ll post more updates on Smuffy’s grand kitchen makeover as they occur.

Helpful Hint: This is the best time of the year to get your appliances on sale. Prices will never be lower than they are during Black Friday sales, which began this year on November 5th and continue into December.

Life with Smuffy (Special Episode – Part 1 of ?): “Death of a Kitchen”

~ Midwest Storyteller ~ 8 Comments

Smuffy, that love of my life, has been immersed in a vast project for quite some time now and I thought it might be time to share.  As always, when he dives into these endeavors, I am thankful if he can manage to keep his body intact amid the whir of power tools.  So far – so good.  I don’t like to think of his angels nappin’.

My kitchen was adorable.  Let me see, that was…take the year Pookie was born…add two…add a couple more months plus time out for the flu…carry the one…and, Yep!  My kitchen was adorable and up to date in…1986. It was all done out in wheat speckled wallpaper and bordered in what looked like quilted chickens. Really.

Now, lest you think I just left it to decay, I have given it a spot of paint here and there, a change of wallpaper and various window treatments since.  It may have had a couple of new microwaves along the way, a different refrigerator and a replacement dishwasher, but all those old stuck windows, clunky cabinets and poor layout remained.

A couple of years ago, the oven died.  Smuffy smiled at me.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting me to get you a new stove.”

“No,” I said, trying to be gentle.  “I’ll be wanting you to get me a new kitchen.”

Smuffy has proven himself over the years to be a man who can do anything.  I hated to see him wear himself to a frazzle, but I knew he’d insist on doing the whole thing himself.

For the past several years, I hadn’t done any updates at all.  It seemed like a waste of time and energy on something that needed a complete overhaul.  Though it embarrasses me to show the state of decline, here we go.  After all, we’ll be even more impressed with the “afters” if we’ve seen the “befores”, won’t we?

Kitchen Before www.midweststoryteller.com

Still trying to hold my head up after showing you that.

Don’t get in a hurry to see the “after” photos.  I’m going to let you peek into the process as it unfolds.  Smuffy works on custom cabinetry and all the other aspects of the remodel every chance he gets in the midst of his busy work schedule.

As I said, the oven passed on a couple of years ago.  I pulled out the graph paper and began work on my if-not-larger-then-super-efficient dream kitchen and I stressed the concept of “Me, JoJo – You, Chip” in this fixer-upper and have been pleasantly surprised to find Smuffy 95% cooperative with all my unique designs. 

We began shopping for new appliances.  Since I wanted a wall oven and we had no wall yet to put it on, we brought it home to our basement and Smuffy ratchet-strapped it to his workbench.

That, folks, is when everything went south.  This would be the longest blog post in history if I paused here to tell of every interference, delay and situation that sprang up to derail this remodel.  Suffice it to say that I am getting mighty tired of carrying sloppy pies down and hot lasagnas up.  Still no kitchen.

Progress has been made along the way!  Let’s take a look –

Kitchen Walnut for Countertops www.midweststoryteller.com

Leave it to Smuffy to go all out.  Hearing of a downed walnut tree several years back, he couldn’t leave it just lying there in the forest.  With permission, Smuffy hauled it home, had it cut into planks and as you see here, he now has it planed and ready to install as my new countertops.  Click here to see the inspiration photo that got me started with my kitchen design and you’ll have an idea where we’re headed with this.

Here he is, when he began building base cabinets.  I’m thrilled with all the deep drawers that glide along on their soft-close hardware. 

Building Base Cabinets www.midweststoryteller.com

Since the demise of the oven, it has seemed that the rest of the kitchen has lost the will to go on.  The burners on the stove have taken to whimsy, choosing their own heat settings without regard to how we adjust the knobs even to the point of desiring to stay on when we turn them off.  The dishwasher began to dislodge some of its more minor parts and finally, a couple of weeks ago, developed a funny smell, shorted out and stopped entirely.  A few days later the microwave stopped in mid-nuke to let us know that it had joined its comrades in their march to the appliance cemetery. 

This is when I started to sigh every fifteen seconds or so.  The next decision I need to make is whether to use regular silver-gray (like stainless steel, right?) or floral duct tape on the refrigerator door handle.

Meanwhile, we inch forward.  Saturday we had Demo Day Phase 1.  The dishwasher went into its new cabinet over the weekend and it is a fabulous thing with its third rack, bottle jets and all the bells and whistles.

Phase 1: Dishwasher www.midweststoryteller.com

While I wait, I’m cooking lots of wholesome meals for my contractor and trying not to sigh more often than necessary.  Since I am going to use my mom’s authentic farmhouse décor, I grabbed my chalk markers and brightened up my kitchen chalkboard with this –

Smuffy Built Sign www.midweststoryteller.com

I’ll keep you posted with updates as we go along and, eventually, those glorious “after” photos!

That’s it for Part 1 of this special episode of my Life With Smuffy. Let’s all say a prayer that this tale of kitchen remodel doesn’t become as “exciting” as some of his other adventures.  At least I can be glad my house is not on wheels.  If you’re all caught up on the latest Smuffy episodes, then, Dear Reader, you know what I mean.  If not, check out, “A Studebaker in the Hands…”  and “Why Stop When You’re on a Roll?”  His river adventures here and here will having you longing for summer days on the water – or maybe not.

Do you have advice and ideas on a kitchen remodel?  What one mistake have you made that you’d like to un-do?  What feature of your new kitchen do you love the most?  I’d love to hear from you.  Please leave a comment!