"New" Kitchen

This post relates to the 'green' aspect of the blog, in that we are attempting to re-use or re-purpose items to better outfit our kitchen instead of buying new things. When we moved in our kitchen was designed for Hobbits decades before the concept of ergonomics was invented. The counter tops were about 32 inches above the floor, which is not compatible with my 6 foot frame. Washing dishes was a ridiculous exercise in lower back pain. In addition, the upper cabinets were fairly deep and built from the ceiling down to about a foot above the counter top. Needless to say, we removed them. Then the fun of home remodeling truly became ours. We now had an open, roomy kitchen with a destroyed ceiling (previously covered by the atrocious suspended ceiling) and no storage space at all. I won't even get into the nightmare of removing the chimney.
We operated that way for about two years, adding open shelves and re-arranging the furniture occasionally. We remained on the lookout for cabinets at antique shops and yardsales, hoping for something to fit in our small space. We even considered building something along the wall where the stove is, but that always seemed too far out of reach.
Well, this weekend we were out enjoying the Spring like weather and we re-found the almond colored metal cabinet featured in the following picture at a local antique shop. We saw it last year in our travels and thought it was nice, but over priced, so we kept looking. This time it was marked way down to a reasonable price for our budget, so we brought it home.
In order to install it, we needed to radically reorganize the kitchen. The fridge was where the cabinet is now, and where the fridge is now there were three shelves and and the small white cabinet and drawer set up now located between the stove and the new cabinet. In addition to removing the shelves, I was able to use my awesome saws-all tool to cut away a few inches from the edge of the counter next to the sink. The vertical shelves near the window had been over the stove.
Now we are able to store more of our kitchen items behind doors or under glass, which will help to dramatically reduce the collection of dust and animal hair, which is frankly gross when getting ready to cook dinner. Hopefully I won't have to rewash everything now, which will save water.
This cabinet is in very good shape for it's age and it seems to fit in nicely with the look of our kitchen, which is pretty eclectic.

That big blank spot above the stove will be filled with the salvaged cabinets we received from our neighbor, Harold. He's addicted to Freecycle and regularly brings home things that he's not sure what to do with them. We often benefit from his scavenging.

Notice the small cutting board on the white cabinet. That was one of my first RRR projects. The wood had previously been part of furniture that my employer was discarding. I was able to make this sturdy cutting surface from some of the chair frames. The very first project was the cutting board I made from the maple blanks that had once been in a bowling lane at an old alley in town that was torn down.
Things that are made by hand, whether from salvaged material or not, just have a better story than things that are mass produced.