Update: The Kitchen

Since I last updated you, the kitchen has gone from not finished to ... slightly more finished. Being pregnant, finishing the nursery, and trying to put one foot in front of the other derailed our best laid plans for grouting and - especially - for deciding on, purchasing, and installing the open shelving.

But with the baby's arrival came my dad, who is great at home maintenance/repair/renovation and seems to like it too. Not only did he grout and install one open shelf but he also reorganized and relit our basement, changed two light fixtures, hung a curtain in our bedroom, and completed many other projects too numerous to name. All this would have taken us forever to complete and we couldn't have been more thankful for my dad's willingness and ability to take care of things while he was here. 

The first step in all of this was to figure out what we wanted for open shelving and how we would get it up on the wall (drilling through tile). We had been looking online and in stores (Home Depot and The Door Store in Cambridge) for wood options.  I wanted something that was thicker than the standard 3/4 inch or 1 inch shelving and that was solid wood (as opposed to laminate). Easier said than done, apparently. Not only do the prices mount rather quickly for something like that, but 1.5 to 2 inch slabs of solid wood are heavy and would have required major anchoring independent of all the heavy stuff we planned to stack on the finished shelves. 

Hmm.

Then somehow, in my foggy new mom haze, I thought to check a restaurant supply website for stainless steel shelving. These babies had it all - they were the perfect length, lightweight, matched the drawer pulls, and were cheap! 

I ordered two, but one came bent. It's replacement arrived approximately twenty minutes after my dad got on a plane out of Boston, so it's sitting in the basement waiting for him to come back. We could attempt installation ourselves but, as neither Drew nor I witnessed all the steps and drilling through our precious tile is no task for the faint of heart, we're happy to live with one shelf for now. It looks pretty good, if I do say so myself!

Finally, my dad replaced the ceiling light fixture with something that actually gave off light. The old boob light had this crazy fluorescent bulb that hardly gave off any light. We could have tried replacing the bulb, but we couldn't find one anywhere. Even in the lighting aisle at Home Depot, where you can buy all the light bulbs known to man, there was nothing that even resembled this crazy thing. It also just seemed like the fixture didn't have enough capacity to give off the kind of light you need in a kitchen. You know, where you use sharp knives. 

Although the wiring in the house is ancient, my fantastic dad was able to install this bad boy:

(Don't mind the odd halo or seemingly dark room. It's really good in person but my photo skills are lacking.)

It gives off lots of light and our fingers are safer than they were from accidents. Hooray!

So there you have it. We are one open shelf from closing the book on the crazy kitchen remodel (until we need new appliances!)