Kitchen

Meet our kitchen… the previous owner’s DIY masterpiece.

The kitchen design is our next project… a challenge in any old house.
I’m not talking about the construction, the remodeling, or the cabinet installation.  Yet.

Just the design.

It’s going to be Kitchen Week here for a while.  Like Fashion Week in NYC.  But with more hysteria, drugs, and nervous breakdowns.

Also, we can all just wear sweatpants.

I’m going to attempt to do the kitchen posts in an orderly fashion:

  1. Introduction—where you meet my kitchen and have wine and cheese with the current layout.
  2. Now that you’ve met the kitchen, we can talk about it behind its back… I’ll show you the issues that we have to work around, and talk about an eyesore that theoretically has resale value.
  3. We go shopping!!  I show you stuff I like.  We try on stuff we cannot afford.  We say catty things about thinner, better-dressed kitchens, and get a pedicure.
  4. We discuss the seventeen-million layout options I’ve come up with so far.  I ask you to help me make sense of cabinet arrangement, stove location, and the possibility of ignoring all wisdom, in favor of open shelving and marble countertops.

So here it is, meet our kitchen.

Try not to be jealous…  It has lots of awesome customizations that yours doesn’t.

Designing a kitchen for our small old-house. Photos of our kitchen before a DIY kitchen redesign. First day we looked at the house… back when I had no idea what I was getting into.

Wow. This is totally fascinating… keep reading.

Anxiety and dread vs. Ballrooms and river views.

This is what I’ve learned:  Mortgage regulations for muli-family properties have changed drastically since the finance debacle/economic explosion.

Any property over 4 units automatically requires a commercial loan—regardless of whether it’s a commercial property.  So, at 7 units, this house is well into that territory.  And?  Commercial loans require 30% down.

Plus?  Banks in our state now require a property’s rental income to cover its expenses.  Which?  If you saw any of the photos?  You can see that any rent would be minimal.  And that actually we would have to pay someone to live there.

Wow. This is totally fascinating… keep reading.