Good luck! For undercabinet lighting, I'm about to choose Environmental lighting high brightness LED lighting. Its dimmable, not hot, and didn't seem ridiculously expensive for LED.

Thanks, Sophie -- do you know if that is only available on line, or something our electrician could source locally?

i think it is only online. the electrician wasn't very up to date on LED so i had to find it on my own.

Depending on how long you'll be cooking in the laundry room you might want to have your range hooked up in there.

I did our kitchen myself working evenings and weekends so we were cooking in the laundry room for over 2 months. That would be a long time with a toaster oven and microwave.

For info on LED under cabinet lights, see: led ucl diy

Good luck! Are you planning on cooking any meals today to stick in the freezer? They might perk you up if you get tired of Hot pockets and lean cuisines and are wondering why on earth you thought this was a good idea... :)

The most important thing to take with you to your temp kitchen is PATIENCE! Hang in there. Patience and a little nice wine every now and again will get you through it.

A table for food prep, cabinets & drawers for dish/utensil and food storage. I didn't like the idea of using paper plates and didn't have the luxury of a sink, but got by using bus bins and doing dishes in the tub. We managed for a year like that, course it was only the two of us.

our temp kitchen

2 burner hotplate. I see you have an electric tea kettle, I boil water in mine then put it in a pot on a preheated burner. Makes pasta much faster. Cooked pancakes and bacon this weekend on mine.

Talk with your electrician about LED. I just had it installed last week with an electrician who had never installed it and he did a good job. He was interested in learning about the product and The local electrical supply wholesaler had a wonderful demonstration table of LED under cabinet lighting. Diode LED is the name of the company. I LOVE my LED under cabinet and over sink dimmable lighting. I don't even need my ceiling light on. I went with the "non dimmable driver" and a special dimmable switch that they make for this product. It dims to practacly 0%. The other option is a "dimmable driver" and use a standard dimmer switch that works with low voltage I believe.

I went with my installation choice because I have read that there has been issues with dimming LED lighting. This seemed to be my best guess at preventing a problem. This might not be an issue with newer installations, I don't know. I had every thing hard wired.

We just had demolition recently & kitchen reno work actually started today, so I know what you are feeling. Our kitchen was actually similar to yours -- minus the island (not wide enough).

Temp kitchen advice: keep extension cords & multi-outlet power strips handy -- where you can find them if you suddenly realize you need them. I had one wall in our study (next to kitchen) with a long table where I set up our temp kitchen.

But in demo (relocating position of laundry room door), some wiring had to be cut, which shut off power to the side of the room with our temporary kitchen. We moved the table across the room, moved all appliances (microwave, Breville Smart Oven, Cuisinart griddler, toaster, coffeemaker).

So, today, the electrician is here -- and guess what? -- cut the power to the side of the room we moved everything to! Eventually, we can move the table back to the original position, but have two large armoire-type cabinets in the way (all wood floors downstairs were replaced with new wood last week), plus my husband is at work. I'm staying home to "supervise."

I found a lot of good frozen meals at Trader Joe's if you have one nearby. It should only take a couple of weeks more for us to have the kitchen functional (cabinets next week, granite the week after), but I plan to do some outdoor grilling, too. If our temp kitchen had to be used longer, I would probably look into a hot plate, but I think we'll be OK without one. I'm going to try Boca burgers on the Griddler tonight, I think (haven't used it much previously except for Panini & grilled cheese).

Stay flexible and optimistic. Everything will work out, and you'll have a beautiful new kitchen before you know it.

am in the middle of construction right now. the things saving me:

paper plates, cups, bowls and compostable silverware. i compost the lot and makes for quick and easy meals.

am doing basic eating out - chipolte, purchasing cooked chickens and coleslaw, that kind of thing. keep it simple, try not to have high expectations of functionality. simple is good.

be sure the crew uses ample plastic and ideally puts up plywood too over the work area. the plastic is good but dust still gets in. the plywood with the plastic really works. cover stuff up with sheets. it gets pretty dusty so be prepared. keep your vacume handy!

good luck!

Well, this won't do you much good since your demo is tomorrow, but for others reading who may have more time, my best advice is to cook ahead lots of freezable, reheatable meals! It absolutely saved us to have the comfort of our own home-cooked food in the midst of the mess of our remodel. Take out, lean cuisines, and cold sandwiches get really old really fast. Having lasagna or a bowl of chili or chicken and yellow rice was wonderful. We did make a couple of crockpot meals, too, and that served almost the same purpose, except for being more complicated to accomplish in the temp kitchen. Good luck, and I hope your remodel goes by quickly!

I decided to set up as full a kitchen as possible. I moved the range, the DW, and the microwave to the laundry room. I scavenged sides of one of the cabinets I just destroyed to make a kind of a cabinet for the DW, and put a "countertop" on top. (I never thought I would be building cabinets the day after I ripped them out of my old kitchen!) I also used another cabinet, with a section of formica countertop, to hold the microwave. I use the bottom for pots/pans and the drawer for utensils. I reused the airgap from the old DW installation to drain it into the laundry tub. I tapped into the gas line for the gas range. See pix:

I am keeping my plates and glasses in a china cabinet in the DR. This is also where the fridge is. (A rather long work triangle!)

With a little work, you can set up a decent kitchen! Talk about TKO -- I started fretting about the best layout for the temporary kitchen!

My demo won't officially begin for another couple of weeks but I am doing what holligator suggested - preparing and freezing. Less chemicals and salt and blah than commercial stuff. I'm considering it the last hurrah for my really aweful kitchen! I've got really great neighbors who are going to let me use their stoves - dw etc. Lucky on that front. Good luck and keep your sense of humor!

So here's the temp set up:

Sink with drainboard and "counter" (next to magnetic washer, so I can move school notices and extra key hook from fridge to temp kitchen!)

{{!gwi}}

Temp kitchen counter -- we had the foresight to do a big laundry room reno a few years ago, with the plan to use it as a temporary kitchen when we eventually did the major reno. This is working out nicely after two meals in here. Microwave to the right, Breville Smart Oven all the way to the left. We're going to use paper plates and cups, but I left cereal bowls out, together with some serving pieces, a cutting board, pans for the Smart Oven, microwaveable pots, and BBQ tools.

{{!gwi}}

I'm thinking my best friend, Trader Joe, will see us through the next month. :)

I'll let you all know how it goes! Fingers crossed!! :)

@enduring -- thanks for that info. I just came back from the lighting store and one of the options I was looking at was from Diode LED. I like that it is dimmable and "green", and came in around the same cost as dimmable xenon. I was panicking this morning, when I learned that the only LED undercabinet at my electrician's preferred supplier was non-dimmable and in a fixture (which looked a little dated, imho.) I will message you in case you are not following this thread.

i just posted this on another thread, the seagull u.c. ambiance linear lighting system can use xenon or led bulbs. we chose xenon for now because the led bulbs are triple the cost. we will exchange when price comes down.

i agree with the other posters, make freezable dinners. it will make your life so much easier!!

good luck!!!