My Not-Quite-Yet Kitchen

Well, there's lots to be grateful for in my kitchen. The tile is in, and it looks beautiful. Just the way I imagined it--clean, classic, and subtle (no switch plates yet, obviously):

Our sink is in, and the garbage disposal and faucets are working:

I love how they turned out.

After two weeks of no stove, we are longing for home-cooked meals. So one night last week I trotted over to my sweet neighbor's kitchen, and cooked fettuccine with home-made pesto sauce on her range. Then I trotted the hot pasta home for dinner. Cleaning up the huge pasta pot was almost a joy; the sink is so much deeper than our old one. The faucet is taller. AND it has a pull-out sprayer:

It's big enough to wash a full-grown pug in (pardon the mess in the background):

The island's component pieces have all been fastened down and lashed together. There are still big holes where stuff is to go. This hole is for the trash compactor:

And here it is, right in the middle of everything, where everybody can bump into it. Sweet!:

This hole is for the wine fridge. There's still a little patch-up work to do on the flooring, as you can see. Right now, I can look down at the dirt floor of our crawl space:

In the picture below, the cabinet on the left will have a vertical divider so I can slide in my cookie sheets, cooling racks, and broiler pans without them flopping around.

Also in the picture below, the shelving (temporarily holding some cabinet fronts) is where my cookbooks will go. The shelves are adjustable, so they can hold even my tallest volumes:

To the right of the bookshelf is a cubby built for the dogs' bed (below). Still a little patching to do on the floor there, too!:

There's still no stove, and it might be yet another week before we get it installed. That's three weeks without a stove--a long time for a home cooking enthusiast to be without one. In the meantime, The Hubby jokes, we could always just set fire to the island's plywood top, and cook something over the flames:

I'm almost tempted to try it.