welcome to 10526 milldale street

Here's a look at Milldale in early 2010, before and right after we moved in.  So you will have an idea of what we're working with.

View from the front with Mr. Schorlemer, the former owner

View from the back, pre-garden, outdoor shower, landscaping, etc.

Here's a very rough and very not-to-scale floorplan.  The areas we're focusing on are the 2 "rooms" at the top.  The house was designed with a formal dining room connected to the kitchen with a pocket door, but it's carpeted and small and really part of the carpeted living area, which was used more as a den before. So we just made that one large living room and turned the original "living area" into our dining room, which has hardwood floors along with the kitchen and entry.  Our table sits by the back windows, but you can see where I've labeled the wasted space that this leaves behind.  This is the area we'll grow our kitchen into.

Here's a view of the entry hall, including our cute realtor (and friend) Ms. Amy Stoy, now Mrs. Amy Falkenberg.  We've redone the entry since then - the 1970s spindles came down, we painted it red, and put a tiffany-style light fixture in.  It's now a nice, striking entry.

To the left of the entry is our living area, which we're standing in in this photo, looking at the original formal dining room, complete with lovely brass chandelier.  It's gone, as are the super thick linen curtains. The doorway you can see to the right is a pocket door into the galley kitchen.

Continuing the tour... the doorway to the left is the pocket door we just walked through.  This is one side of the kitchen - double oven, gas range, microwave/vent, and the gap to the right is the fridge. Two things I don't personally prefer in kitchens - microwaves above cooktops and a wall or cabinet on the side of the range that doesn't allow pot/pan handles to extend.  Notice both are here.  Also notice lack of counter space.

Here's the other side of the kitchen.  Chris calls it the "boob kitchen" because when you're in the dining room talking to someone in the kitchen, that's the only part of their body you can see.  Not such a nice name for it, but you have to admit it clearly describes the annoyance of the layout.  This is our primary issue regarding our kitchen - the inability to visit when we're entertaining and the lack of openness.

Looking from the galley kitchen to the backyard is this little kitchen  nook.  We have a free-standing buffet there for our cappuccino maker and toaster oven.  To the right is the door to the backyard and the built-in on the left is our pantry and storage area. Just to the left of that, before you get to the fridge and the kitchen area we're standing in is the door to the laundry room, then garage beyond.

Here's the former living room, which is now our dining room, looking from the back door area toward the entry.  And there's my Pops in the background, checking out the furnace of course, before we signed the dotted line to buy.  We got rid of the ceiling fan to open it up and put in recessed lights above the table. To the right are the cabinets of the boob kitchen.

So that just about sums up the layout of the main area we'll be focusing on.

Next up: our new kitchen blueprint (aka chicken scratch on graph paper) and photos of the kitchen before the demolition began.