Old Kitchen

The Old Kitchen

Here is a clockwise tour of the old kitchen. Nothing spectacular. Notice the holes in the soffit. The kitchen guys have already been here and looked inside the soffit to make sure nothing was there as the new cabinets will to go up to the ceiling for added storage. And something is there. We live on the top floor and the roof drain, a six inch pipe, runs through it above the stove, makes a right angle, and disappears into the wall above the sink. Ouch! Also the kitchen guys discovered a slow leak in the pipe had been dripping rain water down the wall behind the sink. Time for the plumber. Also, since our cut-off valves did not work, the kitchen guys highly recommended a plumber replace them.. Enter the plumber at $70 per hour.
Fortunately the condo picked up the tab for repairing the leak as it involved common area plumbing. We paid for the shut-off valves and related work. The job has a problematic side, though, as individual units do not have their own master shut-off valves. Do do plumbing work in a condo, the entire building's water must first be shut off and residents must be given sufficient notice. Even so, one elderly lady came up to our condo complaining she could not wash her tea cups in time for bridge because the repairs were taking too long.

What's wrong with this kitchen? The dark cabinets made the kitchen gloomy. The carousel between the stove and sink was wearing out and was not an efficient use of space. The tall cabinet to the left of the stove fenced in the stove, making it awkward to use the left burners. Also it gave the area a closed-in feeling. The counter tops were 50's avocado and wearing thin. Tip: when buying always look under mats on floors and counter tops. We bought from a 90 year old lady whose son was a real estate agent in Peoria -- no match for us big-city buyers, you say. Ha! He had put a Rubbermaid mat on the counter to the left of the sink. We bought, moved in and one day lifted the mat to revealed two large burn holes burnt clear though the formica. Suckered! There is only one drawer in the whole kitchen!!! The corner cabinets on the wall to the right of the sink extend behind the other cabinets. I need a flashlight to see what we've stored there and retrieving anything requires a real stretch while teetering on a ladder.
No you aren't looking at another refrigerator in the photos below.. Above right is the refrigerator, below right is the upright freezer. The doorless doorway by the copper pots looks into the dining area; the doorless doorway by the freezer looks into a hallway.If you look clockwise from the freezer, you are back at the upper left photo. So what's wrong here? The butcher block is unusable as it is blocked in. The dark brown table is dark and too low. The space under it would be wasted but for an ancient Sears Roebuck metal shelf and a small, wooden night stand with a couple of drawers that we have tucked underneath. Definitely makeshift. The copper pots are real, from France, and very heavy. If they don't look highly polished or even somewhat polished, you're right. We use them. We have over 300 cookbooks and love to cook even in this kitchen.

When the kitchen is remodeled, I'll create a duplicate tour of the changes. The work is going to be done by Beacon Kitchens of Elmwood Park here in Chicago. They come highly recommended. They even use a computer to model in 3-D what it will look like as you discuss with them what you want. Us Dilbert's like these touches.
However, to get me in the mood, my wife taped for my viewing the Ocean Spray commercial where the supervisor of the kitchen remodeling crew explains to the family that the crew will become absolutely unreachable for two weeks after they rip out the kitchen's exterior wall, leaving everyting inside exposed to the elements. HELP!

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