Yes! We got the house! Made an offer on it this morning, did a bit of back-and-forth negotiations there, and it’s a yes! This after 2 days of me and the agent narrowing down about 30 houses (out of a previous 125, from the first listings of 200+) to the final 3. Yesterday bumped #1 off the list (BEAUTIFUL new construction house, with an awesome morning room, but bad school district — though it won’t matter much to us as homeschoolers, we had to nix it, in case we decide to move again) and put back #4 and #5 in. Hubby quickly vetoed #2 (bad location, houses in the area not very well kept, not good for resale), #4 (very much like #3 but not as good a location, too near the highway), and #5 (beautiful neighborhood, big kitchen, bad hilly yard — nice for sledding in the winter but bad for resale and gardening, IOW too expensive and not a good value for the price)and we ended up with #3.
It’s number 3 because of the size of the kitchen — I keep thinking — WHERE am I going to hold cooking lessons in this kitchen??? BUT. Hubby is amenable to a remodel, or at least the addition of my dream appliances — though practical me is now changing my mind about getting this, my dream cooktop — maybe I’ll take Geraldine with me and get Kirk’s BTU monster instead — more power, cheaper, and awesome for partying outdoors (yeah, even in the dead of winter). Which will give me a bit more room in the budget for this or this. Meanwhile, I’ll continue my drooling over here. And working on resurrecting my old oven and range comparison charts that I did 2 years ago.
There’s a nice planning area opposite this, where the pantry and ref are, so that’s probably where the second oven would go. The adjoining room — no division — is the “breakfast nook”, which I’m thinking of appropriating for more workspace. Also thinking of getting rid of the island and putting a peninsula of sorts instead….
I have to vent a bit here. Most house listings include the breakfast nook when listing the room dimensions. That is TOTALLY wrong and not helpful at all to a potential buyer, esp. one who’s a serious cook. Especially if you do your initial homeshopping online — we eliminated a whole bunch of houses based on kitchen size.
But take this kitchen, for instance, which was listed as measuring 20′ x 14′. NOT accurate, since they’re counting the breakfast nook with that, a.k.a., in real estate terms, the “eat-in kitchen”. Strictly speaking it’s NOT part of the kitchen since you’ll be doing the bulk of your work around that area where you’ve got your big 3 — range, ref, sink. Having an 11’x14′ kitchen WITH an adjoining 9’x14′ area does not a 20’x14′ kitchen make!!! What about door openings and windows, which effectively cut the workflow in two? For serious cooks who need a considerable amount of counterspace and storage space, the lack of accuracy in MLS listings equates to a waste of time and sets you up for disappointment more often than is necessary. Though of course we had other criteria (flat yard, nice-sized rooms, a large homeschooling room) that led to our decision, we would have saved a lot of time and effort if kitchen measurements were held to a standard. Sure, it’s not national security, but these things matter to people who spend a lot of their waking hours working with food. Man, I could get political when it comes to food LOL.
Seriously, if I can’t make money writing about food, I think I’d like to make some as a kitchen designer. God knows I’ve been doing a fair bit of it for the past 2 years. Think you’d hire me? I promise to be nice and not go all mental on you:) — but then again… there’s Kitchen Design Academy to think of first.
stef – Congrads to you. I’m sure that the “Kahuna” will melt all the snow off your back porch!!! already making all those “mental changes” are you? LOL!
good for you stef! how exciting naman…sige i’ll hire you for my dream kitchen re-do…
Congrats Stef! Does this mean the move will be sooner rather than later???
Hey the kitchen looks great!!! 🙂 I’m looking forward to the recipes you’ll share as inspired by this new cove of yours!
hehehe, kirk! i can just imagine! i think i’d still want to get one to accompany the grill. have you ever fried a turkey using it?
stel, salamat. come over sometime!
mia, when i posted this i thought sooner than later, but now it’ll be june. yay! we can still see each other!
hi toni! it’s not going to be this one after all, but you can bet we’ll have some fun with the cooking wherever we end up!