My kitchen has needed attention for a long long time ,for fifteen years we’ve lived with a make shift kitchen with the bulk of my tinned and dried goods not even being housed in the kitchen, but living in a closet located just outside the kitchen door that  I turned into a pantry,   Just whats been the problem ? well ,I need more kitchen cupboard space in a kitchen that all ready has a full complement of kitchen cupboards .The kitchen itself  is basically a very short  extra wide galley style kitchen, and there in lies the problem, instead of my kitchen being a narrow little corridor kitchen, where two people cannot pass each other, it is in fact fairly wide, but not wide enough to accommodate  an island workspace..

Usually the galley kitchen  is thought of ,as being one of the most straight forward kitchens to design a kitchen cupboard work print  for, as after all you are not really left with many choices..  As a galley kitchen usually consists of nothing more than two rows of kitchen cupboards and appliances, separated by only a narrow walkway, that runs in between them .But because my galley kitchen had plenty of empty space in the center I always felt that there was some yet to be discovered way of adding more kitchen cupboards to my small kitchen space ,so my new kitchen kept getting put off, and put off, and postponed, until I could come up with a satisfactory solution,  well in the meantime 15 years have passed .

The fact that windows run all along one wall has never helped this situation any, so we can only have wall mounted kitchen cupboards along the inside wall ,so basically everything kitchen and food related had to be housed in one 12 foot bank of kitchen cupboards that run along the inside wall ; but at least my kitchen is not dark. ,

It wasn’t that long ago in the history of kitchen design that the term galley kitchen had great negative associations and for me it definitely still does . after all, didn’t this type of kitchen layout  get its name from the cramped and confined cooking quarters of ship or boat ? But more recently most of these  negative associations attributed to the term galley kitchen for most people anyway, have been dispelled ,with modern day houses being built with a smaller footprints ,open plan larger living spaces that combine several different rooms into one larger space ,are in,  and with many of the uniquely designed custom kitchen cupboards and fitments,  combined with  today’s much smaller space saving appliances, the galley kitchen is now one of the most popular, and most requested and sought after kitchen designs. Everywhere that is ,except in my house, I would trade in my galley kitchen in a heart beat. if I could.
Now that we have had new patio doors installed in the dining room which leads off, of one end, of the kitchen, the  window space there, is now effectively smaller , and so has opened up new wall space  so I now get to extend my kitchen into the dining room area by the length of one kitchen cupboard.. I ‘ve decided to make this a double wide pantry cabinet ,placed so ts doors face into the dinning area kind of like a partial room divider, I now hope that all my storage problems are now at an end ,and I can have the kitchen I’ve always dreamed of .

But the dream has been on hold that long that its grown  stale and I’ve gone off it , I had always dreamed of all white kitchen cupboards ,counters and appliances only picking up color from painted walls and accessories, but I don’t feel I could really live with that ,I think perhaps it might feel too sterile  a bit too much like a doctors office .. So what now ?back to the drawing board I guess ,where kitchen dreams are created and recreated . At least now 15 years on I have the inspiration of the internet  and a whole range of programs and software so I no longer have to rely on my own drawing skills and imagination to envision what my new kitchen cupboard layout will look like in real life as I can explore and rearrange them in a “virtual galley kitchen”  first, to my hearts content who knows ,it may take me another 15 years to master the software so just think of all that money I saved ,who is it that said procrastination was a completely  bad thing…  No seriously now, I guess my tastes have changed somewhat over the years  and I am definitely looking forward to exploring all the new kitchen upgrade ideas from  refacing kitchen cabinets in the traditional wood finishes all the way to the very ultra sleek  and modern primary colors and metallic finishes for the kitchen cupboards and picking out a new color scheme and new tiles for the back splash, although  recently I have discovered that I have become a fan of bead board so I might even decide to go with that, but you can read about my galley kitchen dilemmas and kitchen cupboard adventures  and final color palate decisions  in later posts.