The Country Cabin Kitchen: After

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who like to move furniture around in their homes, and those who don’t know where to put their shoes because the shoe basket has been moved again. I like to move furniture around, I like optimum functionality and I like to watch Fixer Upper, so I thoroughly enjoyed the process of rearranging this cabin into something that performs better and looks prettier. As you can see from the before picture below, functionality and looks were not included in the previous kitchen.

But since I am no Joanna Gaines, our most valuable resource on this project was my Property Brother-in-law, Andrés Naranjo. Andrés is an architect and also lives on the same countryside plot that we do. After discussing our list of improvements with him, he took care of the rest and we got to see the progress and make decisions when we visited on the weekends. I’m pretty sure this is an ideal scenario for a renovation and we couldn’t be happier with the results.

In case you can’t tell, that dark corner with a light fixture was the kitchen. The door to the left (blocked off by a makeshift countertop and a camping stove) was a storage closet. As you probably can tell, that storage closet wasn’t used very often, so eliminating it was an easy decision that immediately doubled the size of the new kitchen. Add a window, new floors, a real stove, and some cabinets and we have a kitchen!

It’s still a little kitchen, with a little fridge and a basic oven, but it’s 1,000x better than what it was. I’m finding that there’s nothing that I need that I don’t have, and I haven’t made French toast once! Also those white cabinets are my pantry and it’s the largest pantry I’ve had in any home to date.

The other limitation of the kitchen was no eating space. Even with the new layout for the cooking area, this part of the room was still going to be tight. We decided to blow out the wall to the right of the window where the main entry was and enclose a small porch that was already there. Claiming that porch didn’t add a lot of extra space, but it made a huge difference!

In this “during” photo, you can see the old porch where the green siding, railing and floor planks were.

Now we have room for a table and a small landing space for shoes and things when you come in the door. Oh, and all that fabulous light!

And lastly, right when you walk in the new front door, our little drop space for shoes, slippers, schoolwork, artwork, cookbooks and magazines – it’s all right here.

So there you have it! Our happy little kitchen where I have already made so many meals, taught so many school lessons, and hand washed so many dishes.