Kitchen Update

Remember how I said I was going to do five posts in five days?  I lied.  In the midst of the inspiration surge last week, I had my first dress fitting and our engagement session with the photographer.  All of the wedding buzz (aka stress) killed my motivation and drive to be inspired. 
In other news, we have officially ordered the cabinets for mama's kitchen.  Here is an update on what we have so far...

This was the preliminary floorplan I put together in an advanced design program called Microsoft Paint.  This rendition is extremely hi-tech so please let me know if I need to explain.

After lots of changes and new developments, including moving the ugly old hot water heater out of the kitchen (located bottom left in above picture) and deciding that a stove next to a desk wasn't a good idea and then deciding that the refrigerator didn't work there either, we came up with this...

 

Pretty much exactly the same as the original plan, which is crazy to think because we changed it 52 times in between and came full circle! We had some dilemma with the entry because we wanted ample space to come through the [hobbit hole] door in her kitchen. We opted for an 18" dishwasher because it's just my mom and it helped free up space. We initially had the dishwasher on the other side but it made for a very congested corner with the range there too. We tried putting the refrigerator where the range is, but it made the corner cabinets difficult to access and aesthetically it just wasn't right. We also worried that it might interfere with light coming in that large window. Next, we were going to use Martha Stewart legs and a dropped down desk under the window, until we found out that the legs were more than $500. No thanks. We will find another option for this and already have quite a few ideas.  For the two large sections of lower cabinets, we chose the large 'pots & pans' drawers. They are so much more practical than cabinets and perfect for my mom. We decided to minimize the upper cabinets because the kitchen is already petite and we wanted it to feel as open as possible, especially near the doorways. So above is the final floor plan (done to scale with fancy Home Depot software). There will be some open shelves not shown, but otherwise, this is it! So exciting!! The open space under the window is where her computer desk/workspace will go. We have not decided if we want to purchase a desk or just buy legs and have a dropped down counter top there.

The cabinets she chose are Martha Stewart's Ox Hill in Sharkey Gray, shown here:

That Martha, she sure knows how to make a kitchen real nice like.  We decided on white Staron solid surface counter tops.  The hardware, flooring and other details are still somewhat undecided, but we are definitely making progress.