FD: Kitchen

The next stop on the First Draft tour of the Treehouse Apartment is the kitchen. Hooray! The kitchen is one of my favorite rooms in my apartment. Before I moved into my first apartment, during the summer between college graduation and starting graduate school, it was the first room for which I really had a vision. There was one day when I was out having lunch with my mom and all of the sudden it hit me: my kitchen would be turquoise and red. I hope you can see that vision in the pictures below!

Let's start with a glance at the floor plan:

A quick overview shows that the kitchen is just next to the dining room. It shares one wall with my across-the-hall neighbor, the other wall with the hallway in the apartment building, and the final wall with my living room.

 This is the view straight into the kitchen from the dining room. I selected the poster - with the red building and blue sky - advertising Japan long before I began studying Japanese. I also have some different examples of a painted letter C, which is my real first initial. Rachael Ray has them in her "kitchen" (the set for her show), or at least she used to!

 Here's a shot of the corner were the stove is. There's an odd little wooden soffit above the cabinets, which looks like it might be made out of white-painted plywood, that I just had to cover up with something.

 Here's a better view of the other side of the kitchen. Look at those icky brown cabinets - yikes! My dream kitchen features white cabinets, dark counters, and light blue walls which will make all of my awesome red and turquoise accents really pop.

 Here's a close-up of the artwork above the sink. I bought the Loteria cards that are now in the black frames while I was in Texas before I graduated from college. I love the colors. The blue triple frame on the bottom was actually a calendar that I picked up on clearance in early 2011, just a couple of weeks after moving into this apartment. Each of the cards has an image on one side and a calendar from a month in 2011 on the other. Since its 2012, I decided to just hang onto it as artwork!

 Here are some of the things that line the counter next to the sink. My grandmother always had a kitchen full of roosters, and while I wasn't sure I wanted that to be my style, I just couldn't pass them up when I found roosters that matched my decor. My mom made the cupcake pin cushion and the tin angel is a souvenir from a trip to San Diego where some friends got married several years ago.

 Here's another shot of the strange plywood soffit and my monogram collection. I made the sign that says Minnehaha, which is the name of the creek that runs just past my window. (The arrow is pointing the correct direction).

 Here's the stove with my full complement of candles illuminated. The spoon rest is actually a candle dish I scored at a Wal-Mart ages ago. I made the clock myself, which seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm not the greatest at measuring, and so, because the numbers aren't properly spaced, it's never kept very good time. I took the battery out and got a different clock, but I couldn't bear to part with this one.

 Yay! I love Mr. Man and Little Miss. I used to have this in my office while I was in graduate school, where I had a gigantic metal filing cabinet. These days, I have a plastic filing cabinet, so this hangs out at home. Today? I'm Little Miss Giggles!

 Here's a shot of the rest of this side of the kitchen. The place came with these cup holders I'm using for my mugs previously installed. It's a fun way to show them off!

Here's a view into the dining room, which you saw more about last week.

 I decided to shoot this same photo both from a low perspective...

and a higher one. I'm not sure which I like best, but I expect I'll be featuring something from this vantage point in my "Small Cool" submission. One plus about this bottom option is that it shows off my other rooster - blue with white polka dots - on top of the refrigerator, just beyond the microwave.

Thanks for checking out the kitchen. Stay tuned for the study next week!