If We Owned Our Home: Kitchen Revamp

As a renter, I have been known to once in a while (yeah, I’m underestimating my powers of complaining) curse the builders of our home for making me work around some pretty interesting obstacles.  Our current home has many-a-wonky corner or two that makes no sense.  Now that Mr. Converse Sneakers and I have started talking about buying a home in probably a year or so, since rent in the Twin Cities is not cheap (sometimes more expensive than buying a home depending on the location), I have begun dreaming of renovations, painting, DIYIng up the wazoo, and any other thing associated with home ownership.

Unfortunately, I have taken my dreaming to a whole new level by subjecting our poor little townhouse apartment to visions of revamping the whole place.  It really isn’t very nice of me to do, since our apartment has been overall fairly good to us, but I can’t help but imagine all the things we would do to our home if we owned it.  And, heck, if we had any money to do some renovating with.

So, as any crazy dreamer would do, I am taking my dreaming to the next level by sharing with all you other crazy dreamers and decorating-enthusiasts what I would do (Mr. CS probably has his own opinions, so this is my dream only) if we owned our home.

I’ll randomly share some of the changes we would make to the various rooms in our apartment if this was truly our home and not just a home we pretend is ours as we fork over rent each month.

I shared one of the crazy elements of our kitchen here (the above-the-fridge cabinet that is much longer than the fridge) and how we dealt with it as renters. 




If we owned our home, we would replace that upper cabinet with one that actually fits our fridge.
There are some other weird things going on in the kitchen as well.



We only have two, count ‘em, TWO tiny drawers in this whole kitchen.  We have beyond a plethora of kitchen utensils and silverware than will fit in these tiny drawers.  The geniuses (I really mean that, I bow down to them) that create drawer organizers don’t even make silverware organizers that fit in our drawers, leaving us very sad and angry at whoever designed this kitchen!  They could’ve at least made the two drawers one big one so we could do some crazy organizing in there and fit probably twice the stuff.

If we owned our home, we would add more drawers by either turning the two drawers into one big one or by adding a whole other cabinet to the right of the fridge for drawers only.


My last complaint (for today, hee hee) about this kitchen is the light above the sink.



Even though we get a lot of natural light in this room, it is nice the builders provided us with a light above the sink.  Wait . . . most days I feel upset, not grateful, that they put a light here.  Why?  Well, it’s hard to tell by the photo, but the light is basically right along the wall.  What does that mean?  All the light goes straight down a foot to the top of the cabinet below it and basically stops.  This doesn’t help me see the grime stuck to our dirty dishes!  This does not help me shine my sink when friends come over!  This just makes me angry!  Also, don’t be fooled by the blank outlet cover above the sink (we don’t know why it’s there – it’s just a flat plate with no outlet) or the outlet to the right of the sink.  Neither are light switches.  No, the photo is doing a nice job of hiding the nasty dirty string that hangs down from the light which we use to turn the light on.  So, not only does the light do us no help when it comes to washing dishes, but it also is a hassle to turn on because we have to reach for the string every time, making it dirtier in the process.

If we owned our home, we would move the light toward the middle of a room about a foot and install a light switch to turn it on with.  Or, we would get rid of it entirely and install a light under the cabinet above the sink (which I’m not sure is common practice but would be a lot more helpful).


I’m now not sure if this is making me feel better by sharing or making me even more annoyed by thinking about all the crazy elements of our apartment that we can’t change.  Maybe you can console me in the comments?  Please??  Or, just help me feel less lonely by telling me what changes you would have made to a place you rented or what things you have been itching to do to your current home but haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Either way, I’m going to share more over time because it’s kind of fun to see what we are working with.

Have a great weekend!  I'm going to get my craft on this weekend - I'll share next week!