The Kitchen Nook

One thing we knew for sure when we picked our house, was that this kitchen nook made no sense and had to go! The cabinets lined along the walls on both side, so if you opened cupboard doors, they would hit each other, so when ever this was done, it was just a poor idea.

What we both wondered was, what was the purpose of this space? Storage, eat-in area, or what??? I did some research, and what I kept finding was something like the photo below, it was sort of like a booth, lots of Dutch Colonials built in the 1920's seemed to have this.

But did we want a booth? NO! We were sure we wanted it to be an informal eating area, and maybe have additional storage since we were giving up a lot of cabinets space. So we started taking out the cabinets....
Basically, Alex started by unscrewing the screws that secured the cabinets to the walls. Then carefully pulled them away from the wall.

And we finally ended up with a blank space! Just needed some paint, and of course, we needed to re-tile the floor since they tiled around the cabinets.

So Alex had a lot of fun with that, using a tile cutter is a pain! Most of the tiles needed to be cut to fit the odd space. Oddly enough, now we want wood floors in the kitchen and nook, so who knows, we might redo this sometime.

And the tada! This is what it looked like when we finished, we had a taller pub table we put in the space, and 2 corner shelves that we were able to store some dishes and glasses on. And then... I re-did the space a little more...

First, I hated the table in the middle of the nook, you couldn't move around it, so I needed to be able to put the table against the wall. Problem was the top of the table had space on either side so you could sit around it, and I just didn't like the cherry wood on the table top anyway.
So I went to Ikea and bought a slab of butcher block countertop, which was an idea that I found on the Lettered Cottage Blog's Butcher Block Counter Swap. Funny thing, just like Layla and Kevin, Ikea didn't have the $40 countertop in stock, so I had to get the $80 one, darn Ikea! After picking that up, I removed the cherry wood countertop and attached the butcher block on top of the base. And wala! Instant new table that fit the space much better, and looked cuter! The butcher block slab cost about $80, and it was kind of a pain to unattach the original table top, but everything turned out great!

So here is the nook currenly, we have a 'Wine Tasting' sign above the nook, and on the walls in the nook we have 2 framed wine label prints and then some framed historic pictures of the neighborhood I was able to print. We left another black stool to the left in the nook, but that might not stay, still trying to come up with a better idea for that side of the nook, open to suggestions if you have one! And I hope to add my antique window chalkboard to the space once it is complete!

UPDATE: 10.29.10 This last photo is an update after finishing my antique chalkboard and sanding and painting the table!  So much better than those crummy cabinets!