Kitchens, Old & New

I was so excited to hear that our old kitchen was included in the fall issue of Kitchens magazine.  I especially enjoyed this particular article since Rebecca Razo included one of my other passions… organization. 

Thank you again Rebecca for the incredible honor!  I have to say it was difficult to go from the above kitchen to this one:

I had to remind myself that it wouldn’t stay this way forever. 

In fact, we ripped it out about three months after moving in. 

The space is now our dining area, and we used this 16x22’ back room of the house for our new kitchen:

The room is open and bright.  We tore down the wall separating it from the old kitchen, making it even more open to the rest of the house:

See us through the window below?  That’s us with our realtor when we first looked at the property.  Little did we know what we were signing up for!

The bookshelves moved to our new school room (in progress).  And the closet next to it came out.  The swan sitting on top came with the house. 

We found him a new owner, much to our children’s chagrin.  They begged to keep it.  Sorry kids.

Being a lover of English cabinetry, I was ecstatic to find someone selling an entire English kitchen on craigslist!  It was designed by the famed English manufacturer, Smallbone.  Here it is in the original house:

The owner of the house was replacing it with a more contemporary kitchen since they were trying to sell the house.  Here it is now:

The house is a mansion in a golf-course community.  I can see why an English country kitchen wouldn’t quite fit the bill.  But something like this would:

Our gain!  Here are some other English Country Smallbone kitchens:

Beautiful, right?  The kitchen was probably worth over $50,000.  We got it for $5000.   An Ikea kitchen would have cost us more!  And an Ikea kitchen would have been our only alternative due to our budget. 

When I saw the kitchen I knew that we could make  it work in our empty space.  Since Smallbone designed the kitchen as individual pieces of furniture, it was easy to mix and match the pieces however we wished. 

It came with the farmhouse sink!

I think we got the craigslist deal of the century.  It looks a bit “old country”, but we are contemporizing it to look “modern country”.  It will look different in our space, and will work beautifully I think.   Here is my hubby measuring for new windows and determining placement of the kitchen pieces:

Can’t wait to show you the finished product!