Well, it's been broken all that time. Honestly I haven't really missed it. We grill so much through the summer that not having it hasn't made much of a difference in our daily life. But, obviously, we can't live without it forever. So we finally went out and bought a new one. Only it wasn't so simple. You see we had a very, very small wall oven (24" the smallest they make) and a ridiculously old microwave above it (like 10 minutes to heat up a bowl of soup). The cook top next to it it very old too. So, we decided to do what and sane couple would do and completely renovate that whole 'wall' over the course of one week while we are waiting for our oven to be delivered and installed. Yup.
Greg just started by taking the old appliances out of that 'monolithic' cabinet there. Putting in another wall oven was just not an option for us because it would mean another 24"-er and I can barely fit a turkey in there or even full sized cookie sheets for that matter. Family of 5 + itty bitty oven = not so great.
So, the next step was to get rid of that monolithic cabinet. As soon as it was gone the kitchen seemed SO much bigger. In the process we also uncovered some seriously lovely vintage wallpaper. (We'll get to that later.)
Then, because we decided to get rid of the wall oven we had to take out the old, electric cook top too. Which left us with a perfect space for our new oven which I am waiting to be delivered as I type this. What you see in that last photo is where we are at. The old, crummy back splash was removed and we have some wonky cabinetry to the right in the picture. See how the wall cabinet above those drawers sticks out to the left? Annoying. Also, the range hood is off center and old. So we have quite a bit of work ahead of us. Greg is doing all of this by himself after the babies go to sleep. Not bad, eh? While Greg is working I am under a pile of old Domino and Country Home Mag's along with kitchen design books. Fun, fun! I know people sometimes contemplate an undertaking like this for months, even years, before they start but so far we are enjoying the spontaneous nature of this project.
Oh, and the Quickles are awesome! I made 9 pint jars and they are half gone. I would like to tweak the 'brine' a bit for the next batch. As soon as that stove is in...
