Welcome Cindy. Sounds like you will fit in nicely here; we look forward to your contributions.

Welcome Cindy. I finished my kitchen 3 years ago and it is a natural progression to come here. Although I still hang at kitchens, too. You can add your expertise to kitchen newbies and enjoy it here, both.

Welcome, Cindy! We look forward to your experience and point of view - also, your favorite recipes!

Teresa

Welcome to the Cooking Forum, Cindy. I'm just north of you, in Michigan, and spent quality time in my "new" kitchen yesterday with a sledge hammer, removing cabinets, counters, wall oven, etc. We even took down a wall, LOL, thanks to my son-in-law, Dave, who is quite proficient at destruction. (grin)

I do lots of canning and freezing, sausage making and gardening, so I'm sure we'll be "seeing" each other.

Annie

Hi Cindy,

I made the same migration when my kitchen was done a few years ago. So, I'll ask a Kitchens Forum kind of question: What was the first meal you made in your new kitchen?

Welcome!

JC

Hi Cindy and welcome.

Lot's of drawers in your new kitchen.

Hope to see lots of your creations here.

dcarch

Welcome Cindy!
I don't post a whole lot in this forum but I do read it frequently and it's always great meeting new people who share a love of cooking. Congratulations on your new kitchen, I'm sure many great meals will be coming out of it.
Melissa

Welcome, Cindy! In addition to this great Forum you might also like the Harvest Forum.

I love to cook anything and everything, love to try new recipes and foods. We also garden and I can, freeze and dehydrate all kinds of things.

Sounds like you've exceded minimum qualifications. ;-) Welcome! Congrats on your new kitchen.

Hello. Waving from a lOOOOng way away over the sea! A new kithen is very inspiring!

Welcome, and hope you enjoy a very long stay with lots of participation. It's anguish and joy each time a kitchen is renovated! Creative meal planning, cooking, and clean-up at it's best!!! Hope your new digs are everything you hoped for. ;-)

-Grainlady

plllog...I think the first thing I made in the new kitchen was pizza. I had been craving it for weeks when we were finishing up the majority of the kitchen. There was a bit of a transition between the temporary kitchen set up in the dining room (which consisted of a toaster oven and 1 induction burner!) and when the new kitchen was fully functional but that's the first meal I remember doing completely in the new kitchen...and it was awesome after months of scrambled eggs, french toast and salads!!! We may be one of the few who made it through our reno without going out or resorting to takeout!!

That's a worthy start, Cindy. Pizza is so simple, but requires so much of a kitchen! Not the one burner, one wok, one knife kind of thing that has been discussed here in other threads. :)

Congratulations on managing to cook through your reno! Can you show us pictures of your kitchen, or is it not complete enough yet?

I started here and have visited the kitchens forum briefly, but I have not done much in the way of renovating, other than getting new countertops. That only took a couple of weeks, and we cooked outdoors during that time or used an induction hot plate like you. Actually, I really wanted to do some eating out during that time, and we did for a few meals.

What do you have in your garden at the moment? Do you grow any of your food or is it mainly ornamental?

It sounds like you will enjoy yourself here!

Lars

publickman...I will share some pics of our kitchen below. At first I was a little intimidated by some of the kitchens I saw on here. There are many kitchens that probably cost more than our who house/property cost. I let that bother me for about a week and then I got over myself. We love our home and I'm not ashamed of the more modest budget we had for our reno...so here you go...these pics are mid-reno and I need to take some updated ones but here it is...our new cherry kitchen that I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!!!

This pic is standing in the dining room at the breakfast bar, looking into the kitchen.
The kitchen was completely closed off before the reno. Opening it up was one of the main goals so we took two full height walls down to bar height and we love it!!

This is standing by the full height pantry and looking back towards the living room/dining room. Again, mid-reno so, ya know, mess everywhere!!

The only counter space I had in my old kitchen was about 1 foot on 1 side of the sink and 2 feet on the other side so you can imagine what an improvement. It works so well for us and we love it!!!

Our garden is both ornamental and food. I have a big herb garden and my DH has garlic planted EVERYWHERE...even in my flower beds!!! This year we grew red and white potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers (jalapeno, banana, sweet), green beans, eggplant, kohlrabi, onions, zucchini, yellow squash, pumpkins. We also have blueberries, blackberries and a huge strawberry patch.

Cooking and gardening are passions in life but my career is different...I work as a Human Resources Manager in a nursing home and the 3rd passion in my life are my old people!! Oh, and of course I can't forget about my pup pups...2 mini-doxies, Diesel and Heidi.

Oh...and one more thing, I'm a Southern girl from Alabama so a lot of my cooking could be considered southern cooking...and I LOVE COLLEGE FOOTBALL...ROLL TIDE!!!

So now you know everything about me!!! I look forward to getting to know all about you all.

Thanks for the photos! Your cabinets are very nice, and I especially like your pantry with the overhead storage. I also really like your floor, and your color scheme is similar to mine, except that I have black counters instead of white! I thought about getting white but I was afraid it would show too much dirt - except for flour.

Your garden sounds quite wonderful, and I would love to have all of those vegetables, but I do not have space. It's especially nice to have garlic - I only have Society Garlic, which I think is ornamental - at least it makes nice flowers, and I haven't tried eating it. The only vegetables I'm growing are peppers, but I go through enough of them to make it worthwhile to grow them. Last year I grew tomatoes, but I'm giving those a rest this year.

I used to raise dachshunds, when I lived in Texas, but we have no pets now, unless you count the hummingbirds and alligator lizards.

Cindy, your kitchen is beautiful, sleek. I love your cherry cabs and your pretty floor. I see you learned (and benefitted from) the Cult of the Drawers, (COD), the kitchens forum mantra. And I have all drawers in my lowers. I am sure you are loving your new k room.

What kind of exhaust system are you going to have? to keep your beautiful kitchen grease free?

dcarch

dcarch...here's a pic of that part of the kitchen with the 900cfm ventilation hood installed. All the specs for different hoods we read indicated a lower cfm would have been sufficient but with it being so open now I didn't want to have to worry about the lr/dr surfaces being greasy. We put a sheet of stainless behind the hood and it is my DH's favorite part of the kitchen. We had no ventilation in the old kitchen and along with opening up the kitchen and creating more work space, the ventilation hood was a major MUST for the new kitchen.

That looks like a Cavaliere hood. Not a bad one with multiple speed control.

You may find it necessary to install the hood lower, if you find it not drawing enough smoke out. This hood I think works with 28" above the stove for effective draw, but yours is in a much more open environment.

I don't visit the Kitchens Forum. There are many knowledgeable people there, and many stubborn ones too.

I don't want to argue about many misconceptions about kitchen design and hood selection over there.

dcarch

This post was edited by dcarch on Tue, Sep 30, 14 at 9:57

You're right dcarch...it's a Cavaliere with 6 speeds. The specs indicated installing 28 - 31" above cooking surface. We put it at 29" and so far so good. It gets a bit noisy at the higher speeds...I tested it really well one evening making blackened chicken in an iron skillet!!!

I agree with you about some of the people on the Kitchens forum. Some believe if you don't have professional appliances, a 15 ft island and granite or marble countertops then your really don't even have a kitchen. If you have those things, I say more power to you, but that just doesn't work in our space or our budget...and reading how some people with those kitchen spaces use them, I have probably cooked more meals in my regular old (but updated) kitchen than some of them will ever cook in their fancy EXPENSIVE kitchens for the rest of their lives!!!

I do love the drawers though!!!

I wish Cavaliere had used LED lights instead of halogen bulbs. Halogen bulbs above a hot stove do not last that long.

Go buy a whole box of those bulbs. Now that it is not permitted to make incandescent bulbs, halogen bulbs may get very expensive in the future as many manufacturers are phasing out factories.

The hood runs noisy at high speed because of poor design. The two centrifugal blowers work against each other at high speed.

dcarch

Very nice! Love the drawers and how your cabinets work well with the colors in the flooring.

I know what you mean about the over-the-top kitchens and less than aggressive cooks. I have a friend who can afford and has a kitchen to die for (counter accommodates 10 bar stools comfortably) but she doesn't cook. We have meetings there and I sit and stare and dream instead of being engaged in the meeting.

It's sad reading the reports from the Kitchens Forum. I do stop by there now and then, but not enough to get the current flavor. While it's true that at least since the mid-2000's there have been a lot of high end kitchens done there, it used to be a place for very individual, quirky, modest and downright cheap kitchens too.

Your kitchen is lovely! You don't have to spend a fortune to have a nice kitchen, and well functioning appliances are more important than fancy counters, though I do agree that drawers are worth the price. You did yourself a favor with the overpowered hood. Received wisdom says it will pull better at the lower speeds.

Isn't the garlic everywhere supposed to discourage pests?

What a lovely kitchen, and I really like how the floor picks up the cabinet shade. Also love your range hood, we have a very similar one. Everyone on the kitchen forum was really nice and helpful, but I sometimes felt like the "odd (wo)man out" because I absolutely did not want white cabinets or granite countertops (we went with Cherry cabs and Cosentino Eco countertops).

I'm a ;quirky, homey style kitchen fan myself. At one time I might have been all about "tear it out and make it fresh and new" but now I am getting very sentimental in my old age and I like the older style. Still, it is nice to have some updates like counter space, etc. In my row house they put a tiny half bath in the kitchen and it went from being spacious to very small and also a little bit awkward. We call it the "one butt" kitchen and there is basically one usable space you can stand in and get any work done. I call it the "power position." I'm looking for a new house right now and I am bound and determined to get something with room for two butts! My friend and her SO came to visit/stay with me last month and she said, "Lpink, please in your next house get a bigger kitchen! You know you will love having that!" I also hate that my kitchen is separated from the dining room and living room by a narrow hallway with the stairwell for upstairs and the basement in it so no chance of it ever opening up. Fine for just me but I hate that too when I have company, I have to disappear into the kitchen and they are left alone. Thankfully now I have an SO who can entertain them! But I would be in 7th heaven if I had a closed off kitchen and then remodeled to open it up with a breakfast bar. That's another thing I have wanted for a long time, a breakfast counter/bar for casual snacks, etc. Or at the very least, something I could slide the food out onto from the kitchen into the eating area! I don't like folks having to come directly into my kitchen, they will find out how disorganized I am and what a messy cook I am and find all the scraped off burned bits, etc.! :)

Anyway, I digress! Welcome to the forum Cindy! For sure you will find many kindred spirits here. Can't wait to hear more about the meals you make in your new kitchen and about your garden!

Welcome!

What I like about your kitchen is that you can visit with guests in the other room while you're at the stove, and not have your back to them. At our little house in Oklahoma, we opened up a wall behind the stove, and now I can visit with company while cooking. It's great.

I've been lurking more lately than contributing, but then, I've always taken in more info here than I've contributed, since so many of the people here know much more than I do. I look forward to seeing what you're up to in the kitchen.

Sally

Hi Cindy,

I lurk here for the same reason Sally does. I absorb all of the information I can!

I love your new kitchen! We really need to remodel our home, but it will be several years before we have the money. Our "Baby" just started his second year in college.

I would be crazy in love with all of that counter space & all of the storage!

Looking forward to all of the meals you will be cooking. We LOVE pictures!

Betty

Your kitchen is fantastic, Cindy! It actually looks like a working kitchen instead of a costly show-piece for people who live on take-out.

But I have to see some pics of Heidi and Diesel!! LOL

Welcome to the forum, Cindy!

jasdip...if you think the kitchen is fantastic, check out these two sweeties!!! Diesel is the black & tan, Heidi is his daughter and she is a chocolate dapple. I love these two like they are my biological children!!!

Oh, what heart-melters!!!! Diesel is adorable! I've never seen a colour like Heidi before.
Of course you'd love your furkids as if they were humans. LOL
We have 3 cats and they're our kids.

Thanks so much for the puppy-love pic Cindy!

This post was edited by jasdip on Fri, Oct 3, 14 at 19:46