This is a niche that was in the family room part of the kitchen/family room.
It is pretty and adds architectual detail. I guess. The thing I like about it the best is that I can use the word niche to talk about it.
Since we live
The door to the laundry room is in the far corner of the family room. So, to get into our planned pantry from our kitchen work area, we walk through the kitchen, through the family room and through the laundry room and then back. Inconvenient, especially when the closet is about 4 feet from the kitchen.
So this weekend, M did this to the niche.
He eliminated it. The niche is gone.
A new wall, flush with the existing wall in the family room will go up. The closet door that was in the laundry room will be put in the new wall, 4 feet from the island in the kitchen. We are both excited about that. But first there are a couple of other things that we (the royal we of course) have to do first.
Take a look at the picture above, the one with the labels. See where it says light switches? We don't like them. You could say they are the #1 item on our list - Things We Don't Like About the House on the Hill. (so far I think the list has about 3 things on it and no direct door into the pantry from the kitchen is probably #2) We don't like them for several reasons. They look bad for one thing. Really ugly. Seeing this my sister K, My Girl and especially my Gorgeous GodDaughter will understand just how bad they look to me - they know I have a thing about symmetry and eveness. M is even worse though he would call it level. These somehow miss the mark. Ya think?
But even worse than the way they look is that the 2 switches that are together are the only switches for the overhead lights in the kitchen/family room and they are in the dining room. Just to refresh your memory, our bedroom is across the kitchen.
So at night we turn out the light and walk to our bedroom door in the dark. When M gets up in the wee hours of the morning to get ready for work, he has to walk across the kitchen in the dark to turn on the kitchen light. Maybe it is only an inconvenience. But it has become an irritation to us. We both have had bruises from walking into the obstacle and lately it's become down right difficult for me to do!
When M eliminated the niche, it opened up the wall behind the switches.
This will allow him to work the magic that he does with electrical stuff and put in a 3 way switch so that he can put another switch for the kitchen light over by our bedroom door. He will take both these boxes out and install 1 box for all 3 switches and we will both be happier. Yeah! Inconvenience/irritation/ugliness gone. He will also reroute an outlet that was in the niche and relocate the pantry closet light switch. All of this will involve some patching of drywall too. He is actually working on the electrical stuff now.
The other thing that has to be done before the wall is built is also very important to us. As I said, we buy ahead and in bulk, but we also stock up during sales and buy meat directly from the farm. Of course we have to have a freezer. A big freezer. We haven't been able to come up with a place to put it in the House on the Hill. It is still in the Little Old House. Talk about inconvenient. There is an empty space next to the washer and dryer but it is about 1.5 inches to narrow for our freezer. I also would like to have that space for a sink/cabinet. (the third thing on the Things We Don't Like About the House on the Hill list is the laundry room is too small - I'll deal) We talked about just putting the freezer in the pantry but it would take up a huge chunk of that space. So what we are going to do is leave a pass through where the hole is. The one that is left from the former closet door.
The front portion of the freezer will slide through this hole into the pantry so that it is even with the 16" deep shelves we are putting on that side. The back portion will remain in the laundry room. (the refrigerator at the Little Yellow House was the inspiration for this idea) There should only be about about 8" of the freezer in the laundry room, I can camoflauge that in some way. I will be able to have shelves on both sides and above the freezer in the pantry as well as on the opposite wall and the end wall. The reason we have to move the freezer before we build the wall is that it won't fit through the back door without removing the door and casing. It also will not fit through the door into the laundry room, it's only a 24" door and the pantry closet door is even smaller. So we have to move the freezer into place before we build the wall and since M is doing all this with a back that is hurting, the freezer will not get moved this week.
While M has been doing demolition and electrical magic, I've been having a wonderful time. I painted my sewing/craft room. The ceiling has a fresh coat of white paint on it and the walls are now a lovely shade of green. Here's a peek part way through.
I love it. Tomorrow I will paint trim. We are way behind schedule for this room. Hurt backs and achey legs have slowed us way down. Good thing we are not on a deadline! But I can't hardly wait to have my machines where I can just sit down and use them when I want. I haven't been able to do that since this guy moved back home or almost back home.
To say nothing of ransoming the Girlies room which is being held hostage by my sewing/craft stuff.
(the overflow is in the guest room)
That lovely curtain is up to block the sun that has been beating down on us without mercy. The one that has been making us fill up buckets of sweat luck.
It is very exciting getting my sewing/craft room closer to done. But the real excitement of the weekend, the really, really big excitement? The niche gone in the kitchen/family room. Though we had scraped popcorn and patched drywall, it didn't seem like we had really started the redo of the kithen. But the demolition, rewiring and patched drywall is a HUGE start on my kitchen. My kitchen is really started. Really, really started. Very, very exciting to me - I've been without a real kitchen for a long, long time. Next time I'll post about the purchases and the design plans for the House on the Hill's kitchen redo. And the lack of design plans. I need help.
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