It's Not A Kitchen Remodel, But It Will Do

Recently, Mr. R got on my case about how our plasticware collection was lying in a container on the floor of the freezer room.  (I'll tell you what THAT is in a minute.)  Poor Mr. R was trying to take some food with him on the road, and there was cat hair in every single container.  Tis true, we have completely run out of storage in our tiny, TINY, kitchen.  I love my house, but from the day we moved in, I have emphatically hated the kitchen.  I call it the "Manhattan Kitchen" because it's so small that it belongs in a studio in NYC, not in a family home in Florida.

The room which you are about to see is what I call the "freezer room"  or the "weird room." It is a stupid room with basically no purpose.  It lies directly between the master bedroom and the kitchen.  It is "supposed" be a dining room, but it is so small that no real table can fit in it, plus actual chairs.  If you push back from the table, you will either fall into our bedroom, slam into a wall, or end up in the kitchen.  I consider it an architectural FAIL.  It has a window, a door to my room, an opening to the kitchen, and then is open to what we're using as our dining room, which is SUPPOSED to be a family room.  We also keep my husband's drum kit half in the freezer room, half in the dining room.

Now, our garage is another architectural FAIL...as the room where most men like to spend time working on projects, and whittling around, has one electrical outlet...ONE!  It's the most inane thing ever.  So I said to Mr. R about five years ago, "Why don't we put the deep freezer into the weird room?"  (because the weird room with no actual purpose has four electrical outlets...please explain this to me!)  The deep freezer fit just fine, and it is more convenient to go into the room right next to the kitchen to get extra items anyway.  So the weird room became the Freezer Room, and I started storing extra kitchen stuff in there because we are bursting at the seams.  First, I moved a small white bookcase which had been in the garage back into the house, and kept cereal boxes on it, plus some large appliances like our crockpot.  See?

There is also no place to put a garbage can in our house.  I refuse to put it in the pantry with our food.  I mean, Ewwww.  Gross!

This is the door that leads to our master bedroom.  As you can see, hubby's drums are located right next to it.  This slim bookcase is the only barrier.  I keep lots of stuff on it; bread, baking pans, the foodsaver, the juicer, a lamp (not sure why that's there) extra bowls...I really  just don't have any space in here!

Can you see how narrow this room is?  There's my bedroom door again.  And the freezer.  With all the plastic bowls on the floor, because I just had no space for them.

This is the room from my bedroom door.  Looking into the Manhattan Kitchen.

So I decided that I was going to find another bookcase, to keep the plastic ware off the floor, and also put other things which are stacked on top of my refrigerator, like my KitchenAid attachments and such.  Seems simple, except that I couldn't find any.  I didn't want new; I wanted to find used so I could spend less money.  I have it in my head that someday, I'm going to have the money to remodel the Freezer Room by knocking down a wall and extending the kitchen.  So I wanted to go cheap on this.  I went to my local Goodwill and was horrified to find that for a beat up, broken bookcase with a kid's name carved into the side, they wanted $80!  I walked away from that, and decided that I'd go yard saling on Saturday.

I am not a yard sale person.  I feel so bad if I don't find something I like and have to drive off.  As my sister said, it's like telling someone that their taste sucks.  I love thrift and antique stores, but I haven't done too many private sales.  I went to five different yard sales and none of them had furniture until Number 6.  This guy was moving to a smaller house and he had a lot of furniture to sell; and I saw the hutch buffet, and I thought, THAT'LL DO.  While he was selling his sofa, I drove home, grabbed Tiger, and had  him help me put the seats down in my Durango.  Then I drove back and bought this thing for $60.

Forgot to take a picture before I started loading it up.  Yes, it's antique white crackle paint with chicken wire.  Mr. R is going to HATE IT.  But...it was $60!  And can be repainted.  And is Broyhill, which I know is a good brand and sells for about $600 retail, if I'm not mistaken.  Score!!!

So I moved the freezer in front of the window.  And moved the tall bookcase into the corner where the freezer used to be.  And put the new hutch by my bedroom door.  And started loading her up.  I grabbed all my cookbooks off the entertainment center (because there was no room in the kitchen for my cookbooks!), dusted them all off, and started arranging the top part which is open and so I wanted it to be pretty.  I put my red KitchenAid bowls, my Pampered Chef glass measuring pitchers, and our wooden salad bowl, plus our antique waffle iron.  Filled the rest in with my cookbooks.  The plastic ware is in the bottom, still in baskets, but away from kitties.

Nutmeg!  Get out of there!  What part of "away from the kitties" do you not get?!?!

Finished, for now.  I may change some things around, but I'm quite pleased right now.

Doesn't the open portion look really nice?

Pampered Chef glass measuring bowls.

Mostly finished, but this is the final placement of furniture, with a few things left to put away.  Plastic ware is being run through the dishwasher, I threw away anything that didn't have a mate.  This will have to do until I can afford the $20000 remodel I keep imagining in my head.  Do you like?