A Tale of Two Kitchens

Dividing a large house into two homes required adding a second kitchen.  This kitchen will be mine. It began as a bedroom so lots of changes. Originally there was a large wood framed window and decorative rod iron bars. We removed those and reused them on the bedroom window in the other home.

I added a large three panel aluminum door to walk out to a side patio. This garden is covered with mature shade trees.

We just added sod yesterday but in a couple of weeks it will be the perfect place for our golden retriever to play ball.

There is enough space for a table and chairs, so the covered terraza will be a great place to hang out with our dog.

 I also chose to repurpose this room because I could open it up to the living room dining room. While I love the open space, I may want to also close it off if I am using the A/C. A combined effort of carpenter and ironmonger fabricated beautiful sliding doors.  Textured glass behind the iron bars will be added soon.

The walk in closet that converted perfectly to a pantry. I knocked out a part of the wall so I could set the fridge back and leave a larger space between the fridge and cook top.

The counter on the pantry side is reserved for my appliances, with ample storage underneath.

As a bedroom, this wall opened into a bathroom. I closed door and opened it on the opposite side to provide a bathroom for our guestroom.  

Across from the island, is the cleanup aera, with a large double sink and a raised dishwasher. I placed the oven on the opposite end of this counter, further away from my prep area to avoid the heat.  Below is more storage.

Rather than building upper cupboards, I repurposed the top of a buffet cabinet and finished it off with 2 short shelves. In the photos , the light under the cabnetry makes the backspash look whiter than it is, but after installing the cabnet we realiazed it will need more support due to the weight. So, it may be a few weeks for it to be reinstalled with corbel brackets and I am posting the phots as they are.

In the second kitchen, I made few changes to the footprint. I widened the peninsua counter to allow for stools on one side and I extenede this counter with a curved finish .

The original kitchen was big and serviceable, however, the cabinetry needed to go. The stainless-steel counters were dented, rusted and tired. Ditto for the enameled metal cabinets.

The tile work inside the pantry was a work of art, so I kept that along with the the hardwood louvered doors. I only needed the carpenter to spruce up the wood. This room is still a work in progress so the proper lights have not ben installed.

The window over the sink was sliding aluminum, and I replaced the other windows with a similar material. This east facing kitchen gets a lot of sun, so I installed a dual-purpose screen, called Maya de Sol, inside the decretive rod iron bars.  This keeps out mosquitos and it cuts the glare and heat from the sun. There is space for a kitchen dinnet set in front of this window that overlooks the garden

These two kitchens are completely differnent but once they are finished they will be equally servacable.

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