Music and Cats

One year ago, we were days away from moving in to our remodeled kitchen. We’ve cooked in the new kitchen for almost a year now, and for those of you who are interested (or who have gotten here by Googling “black granite countertops” or “subway tile backsplash”), here are a few thoughts on the process and products that went into our kitchen:

1. Getting rid of the 4th door into the kitchen was the right thing to do. We rarely used it, and I don’t miss it at all. And the small hall closet we created where the door had been is, as you might expect, very useful. It took months for me to learn, but now, when I can’t find the jacket I was wearing the previous day, I look in the hall closet. Usually, Paul has hung it up for me. (Thanks, sweetie!)
2. The honed black granite countertops are wonderful. They have been easy to keep clean, and we haven’t had problems with staining. (This is not to say that there are no stains; Paul noticed a couple of dime-sized stains last week. I think that means it’s time to seal the countertops again.) Unexpected bonus: the dark gray, matte surface is a great backdrop for food photos.
3. That sunny yellow linoleum floor is a thing of beauty… when it’s clean. Unfortunately, keeping it clean has proven time-consuming, as we track in dirt and water through the back door. The floor is overdue for sealing, which should keep it looking better between moppings.
4. Exhaust fans are good. (I say this not only as a cook, but as an architect who knows how badly water vapor can damage a house.) Our ‘before’ kitchen had no exhaust fan, and serious wintertime cooking was certain to fog the windows. Our variable speed range hood can handle any amount of steam we manage to create. Unexpected bonus (I think): anyone who parks in our driveway while the exhaust fan is running can tell what’s cooking for dinner.
5. Everyone should have a bookshelf in their kitchen. Enough said.
6. Cooking with gas is just as great as I remembered it… even better, in fact, with a really nice stove.

By the way, this is our kitchen a year ago, before we moved in. Photos of the lived-in kitchen to follow, later this month.

No, that’s not right. Let’s try again. La la la la la…

I bought our brand new kitchen a red enameled cast iron french/dutch oven that weighs about one stone…

Well, it doesn’t scan, but it’s the truth. Yesterday, I gave into temptation and bought a red enameled round French oven. For the kitchen. Because a new kitchen deserves a nice present, doesn’t it?

As soon as the oven arrives (which should be Monday), I’m going to try the no-knead bread recipe that’s been making the rounds of the food blogosphere. I’ve never been much of a bread baker, but this recipe is reputed to be almost foolproof. And, while it takes almost a full day make a loaf of this bread, only a few minutes of that time involve any active participation by the baker. For the first 18 hours, the dough sits in a quiet place and does its thing. The french/dutch oven doesn’t make its appearance until time for baking.

Paul’s very low sodium diet limits his choices of store- or bakery-bought bread. I’m hoping that this recipe, with its very small amount of salt, will be a hit with him. I’d love to be able to bake bread that we both can enjoy. Oh, I feel a song coming on again: I gave my love a loaf of bread that was no-knead and low-sodium…

Save for some tiling and painting that we will be doing, our kitchen is finished. Yesterday morning, I took a few photos, to document that it was once pristine and (almost) perfect. Then we began reclaiming the space, slowly filling drawers and shelves with cookware and dishes. I went to the grocery store to pick up ingredients for dinner, and, upon returning home, covered one countertop with produce, bread and cheese.

Early afternoon, our contractor stopped by, bearing a couple of bottles of wine. Paul got our checkbook, and wrote one last big check. A handshake and a hug later, the contractor was on his way, and the kitchen was finally ours.

By the time one of our neighbors stopped by for a glass of wine and a chat, Paul had moved a small table and a couple of even smaller chairs into our tiny new breakfast nook. After drinking most of a glass of wine, our neighbor (who shall remain nameless to spare her further embarassment) gestured emphatically while making a point, and knocked her wineglass over, creating a Pollock-like splash on the wall. (The wine glass suffered no ill effects.) As the wine dripped down the wall, I felt torn; should I reach for paper towels or for my camera? Clearly, the towels won out, so the wine stain in this photo is only a pale shadow of its original dripping glory.

After a couple of minutes, I remembered to tell our neighbor that we were already planning to put another coat of paint on this wall. No longer quite so mortified, she informed me that the wine was an offering to the kitchen gods. If she is to be believed, nothing will ever burn in our oven, or boil over on our stove, or spoil in our refrigerator. Everything that we cook will be delicious, and our kitchen will be a happy place forevermore.

For all that, I would throw more wine on the walls.

(By the way, you, too, can paint like Pollock. It’s fun; give it a try. A mouse click will change the “paint” color.)

There’s no such thing as having too many books, only too few bookshelves.

I’ve been looking for a source for this quotation, which I think I’ve read somewhere. Even if I haven’t read it, but am quoting myself, I don’t imagine that it’s an original thought. I’ve said it often, while looking at the books stacked two deep on our shelves and contemplating where we might install more shelving. Truth be told, though, I don’t really believe it. There are some books that aren’t worth keeping, that you read once and know you’ll never read or refer to again. Those books can go.

This is even true of cookbooks. (This may be a radical idea for some, but stay with me here.) Some have recipes that don’t work, at least not for you. Some have wonderful recipes, but they don’t fit your lifestyle, cooking style or dietary restrictions. Some you find you just don’t care for. Those cookbooks can go, too.

There are some cookbooks that you will return to frequently. In some, you have favorite recipes, to which the book will eventually open of its own accord. Others become tattered, stained and note-filled from repeated, regular use. These are the books that deserve a home in the kitchen, close at hand (or on your bedside table, but reading cookbooks is different than using them).

When we moved into this house, our cookbooks took up residence on the bookshelves in our living room, within a few steps of the kitchen, but not an ideal location. When I was reworking the plan of the kitchen, I realized that we had a perfect spot for a tall, narrow set of bookshelves. These shelves are in a formerly unused corner of the kitchen (at the bottom right of the ‘after’ drawing in my previous post). They will hold only a small collection of cookbooks, but at this point, we don’t have a large collection. However, we now have an empty bookshelf in the living room, but that certainly can’t last for long. Nature abhors a vacuum… especially on a bookshelf.

Some time ago, I promised before and after floor plans for our kitchen. We are about to take possession of the kitchen (it’s all over save for a walk-through, a few touch-ups and one last big hit to our bank account), and I figured I should post the plans before the final photos. For those of you who’ve been checking out the remodeling photos, and are somewhat spatially inclined, these drawings will hold few surprises.

Here’s the kitchen before:

The most outstanding “feature” of our old kitchen, from a designer’s point of view, was that it had four doors. Four! Where did all of those doors lead? The door on the bottom wall into the living room, the door of the lower left onto the stair to the second floor, the door on the upper left onto the basement stair, and the doorway on the right into the laundry room (and to the powder room and back door). The traffic pattern created by all of those doors limited the space available for the kitchen itself; the room was really a big hallway, with a kitchen tucked in around the edges. The L-shaped cabinets, with sink and range, fit into the one corner not part of the circulation space. The refrigerator sat up against the wall between the two stair doors. And the microwave was on a butcherblock next to the chimney (the gray box between the two stair doors) for the boiler in our basement.

With help from my architect father, I fought with the layout of this kitchen for the first three years that Paul and I owned the house. We were trying to keep all of the doors, so our initial redesigns were attempts to shift and/or minimize the existing circulation paths through the kitchen. After generating one too many unsatisfactory ’solutions,’ I finally talked Paul into giving up one door into the kitchen.

By closing off the door to the second floor stair (at the lower left), we turned a cross-shaped circulation path into a T. We would have more wall space for cabinets and appliances. The existing L of cabinets could be changed to a simple, straight run with the sink in the middle. All we had to do was work around the chimney. For several months, I worked on a design that wrapped the chimney in kitchen cabinets. It was rather fussy (not in a good way), and would have been complicated to build. Then one day, after I’d been thinking about and drawing and redrawing this kitchen for four years, I suddenly knew what to do to solve the kitchen layout easily and elegantly. I added one wall.

Here’s the kitchen after:

The new wall runs along the face of the chimney, parallel to the stair wall. Not only does it create a straight wall on which to put cabinets, the refrigerator and the range, but the spaces between the new wall and the stair wall are useful. At the lower corner of the plan, the new wall creates a closet off the stair landing. Our house had no hall closet, so even a small closet with room enough to hang a few coats and store the vacuum cleaner seems luxurious. To the other side of the chimney, the alcove between new wall and stair wall is just the right size for pantry shelves.

Those of you who know something about kitchen design will recognize that the work triangle (a triangle drawn between the kitchen sink, range and refrigerator) is a little oddly shaped, but it still works. We’ll cook with the kitchen we have, and be much happier than in its predecessor. We also moved the washer and dryer to the basement, freeing up that space, with its northeastern exposure and abundant morning light, to become a small breakfast nook.

We’ll be moving back into the kitchen this weekend. There will be photos. There will be cooking. There may even be photos of cooking. It’s going to be good.