Kitchen Makeover

Okay, so maybe the term "makeover" is a bit extreme. But I was so pleasantly surprised with my little project from yesterday!  I guess most of you don't know what our kitchen looked like before... I guess before pictures would have been helpful.  These are the best pictures I could find of our kitchen before that were randomly taken at some point.

So in the beginning, we first had the table and this little microwave cart in here.  

But then we realized there is a ton of room in our living room and very little counter space or storage space in our kitchen. 

So we moved our table to the living room a while back...

and decided to buy another shelf from Walmart for more storage.

We bought it awhile ago but just never got around to putting it up.

So yesterday after classes, I had an unusual amount of energy and an unusually low amount of homework and figured I'd give it a shot and surprise Jimmie when he came home from work.

It actually took a long time to assemble because in the packaging, certain parts that get screwed in had been put into the poles and jammed in there crooked.  So I put Tarzan on and spent nearly half the movie trying to get these screws out and in the way they're supposed to be. 

Eventually I got it, set up the shelf, and rearranged our whole kitchen.

So I got creative with this little piece.  Originally we had just talked about leaving the microwave cart where it was and then putting the shelf against the empty wall for storage.  But I get SO frustrated with not having much surface area to sit things when I'm cooking and stuff... (especially since there's no dishwasher so if in the process of your cooking you use more dishes than can sit in the sink or can be washed quickly...there is no where to prepare things.)  In the picture above, I used it to sit my phone computer and water while I cooked :)  It's the same microwave cart, but I remembered that we had some extra wood paneling type material in Jimmie's office that was left over from a desk that we built.  It was sturdy and looked nice, so I just got the tool kit out again and cut it to shape with an exacto knife.  Score! It's so convenient, we're loving it.  

This is just another shot of the new shelf.  I'm sure we'll get plenty more things to put on the shelf, but for now I'm just enjoying the simplicity of it and the fact that we're actually able to get into our cupboards successfully for a moment. 

So ta-da! I know it's not super special, but our kitchen feels so complete now and like I can actually work in it without going crazy! And it always feels good to be productive.