House and Garden - Kitchen

I've been living in this apartment for just under a year, and with my lease renewal coming up in the not too far future, it occurs to me that I'm full of ideas of what I'd like to do with the place, but rather weak on the execution. Hopefully by putting some of these ideas in writing, I'll get around to applying them. Over the next few entries I'll describe each room and then list what I'd like to get done.

Kitchen
My kitchen is mostly a mess. It's not tiny, per se, but it's not particularly well designed. It has a number of cabinets, but they're mostly high up and out of reach, so I don't bother using them. As a result, all of my pantry foods are stuffed into two small cabinets, and any time I go grocery shopping (which I grant you, is quite rare), I end up with stuff just sitting around on the counter. Between the two closets is an open shelf where all my dishes sit.

Half of my counter is taken up by a dish rack, and the other by my kettle and slow cooker.

I have an Ikea kitchen cart which could be quite useful, if not for the fact that its entire surface is taken up with my toaster oven, laundry detergent and (yet to be used) espresso maker. The bottom shelves have most of my pans and food containers, thrown about haphazardly.

To do:

1. Have hanging "boxes" made - these will hang on the wall, one square over the washing machine and one rectangle over the Ikea cart. The square one will include laundry supplies like detergent, hanging pegs, and fabric softener. The rectangular one will hold the toaster oven, flour and sugar. This will clear up my Ikea counter for things like my mixer, my kettle and my slow cooker and will open up my limited counter space.

2. Make enamelware boxes -
   I'd like to make faux-enamelware boxes to store things like my laundry detergent, flour, sugar, etc., similar to the bread box pictured.

   Illy coffee apparently sells coffee to cafes in large aluminum containers, which I'd like to paint in enamel paint and then adorn with the lettering to make it look somewhat like the picture. I've been trying to find a place in the neighbourhood that sells Illy with no success, but I'm on a mission to procure the tins within the next couple of weeks.

   
   

3. Coffee/Tea/Sugar set - Eyeball's office at one point used Illy coffee in their espresso makers and at the time she collected the empty coffee pod tins (smaller versions of the ones I want to get in the previous item as well as round ones). I plan to spray paint the round ones in black, glue a pretty image (already picked out) on them and use a pretty font to mark their contents. I'll then spray a coat of varnish on the whole thing to make it shiny.

4. Spice holders - It's not a new idea, but I've always liked it. I'd like to stick magnets to the bottoms of watchmaker's tins (round aluminum tins with clear plexi tops) and fill them with spices. They can then be magnetized either to a piece of flashing or to the side of the fridge.

5. Art work - I'd like to do some sort of creative canvas decoration. My kitchen has little colour, so this would spice things up a little. I've yet to settle on a particular idea, but I have a couple in mind.
   

None of these ideas will do much to solve my pantry storage problems, but I'll tackle that later. For the time being I'd just like to have a usable kitchen.

Posted by raptorgirl at December 3, 2005 02:44 PM