When we moved into this wee tiny place in April 2007, every room needed work.  There was wall paper to remove, walls to paint, windows to replace, umpteen handrails to remove in the bathroom.  The only thing in good condition was the hardwood floors.  And the tile in the bathroom was decent too, once you got past the desk lamp as light fixture.  And the accordion door in place of the actual door.  But I digress.  This is what the kitchen looked like.

This is looking in from the dining room, where we were removing wall paper (hence the giant bits of missing wall.) The door on the other end goes into the garage.  We don’t talk about that.  In a perfect world, we would have replaced the cabinets then too, but windows without cracks were higher on the list (and in a perfect world, we would have bought a killer mid-century house to start with).  So we decided to paint what we could, replace the counters and sink and get a stainless steel frig.  We took the doors off the cabinets and…they’re still off.  Started sanding them and discovered one of the layers of paint is some weird uber glossy stuff that WILL NOT SAND.  So this spring we will try some Kilz on them first.

The counters we got are a black and white speckled Corian, because it goes with everything.  Good thing too, because this year I decided I no longer liked the butter yellow I had painted the walls.  The walls in the dining/living areas are a pale blue, and in a house this small it’s better to maintain a little continuity.  The kitchen is now a slightly greener version of the pale blue.

And now the point of this post.  This is what the kitchen looked like last Saturday. A hot damn mess. FYI, if your initials are JWR or RD, you may want to avert your eyes.This might sting a little.

Painful, I know.  In an ongoing effort in the New Year to declutter and make our spaces more efficient, I opened a can of whup-ass up in here over the last week.  Still not perfect, but closer.  For inquiring minds, this is about 20% of my cookbooks.

See that dish rack? Indeed, we have no dishwasher.  None of the places I’ve lived in since I left home has had one, so I don’t really miss it. I hear they are fabulous. And we put the bottom doors back on in the middle to guard the garbage from a certain yellow Lab.  You can see the lovely orange color they were once.

Until we get the proper doors back on, I decided to add some fun curtains.  Not everyone’s style, maybe, but the colors go well with the walls and the rug and it serves my purpose of enclosing that shelf.

Got rid of a bunch of crap under here and some spiffy shelf paper.

Put some snazzy magnetic spice jars on the fridge and made a sweet little curtain for that shelf.  Yes, I am aware it is too short. I have decided I can live with it.  I am auditioning that gray fabric as slipcovers for the food processor and blender that are now on the fridge.

The pantry.  Took 7 cans of olives out of here!

New accessories to finish it up!

Still need to replace the door into the garage – it has a *ahem* small hole in it due to busting through when we got locked out.  Once that is in, I can paint the trim and both doors to match the window.  And this pile is going to Goodwill!  The intervention from Hoarders is delayed a little longer.