The Sees: In Our Next House...

Okay, let's talk kitchens.

NUMBER ONE on the "In Our Next House..." list is The Kitchen.

The kitchen can make or break the most beautiful and well designed of houses for us, or rather me.

When we built our house the kitchen was an afterthought. After all, I didn't cook or bake much and without kids, it was just another room in our first house. With that mindset, that's exactly what we got, just another small room in a small house. Impractical in every sense, lacking in sufficient cabinet and counter space and a complete train wreck when it comes to entertaining.

Our kitchen essentials list is illustrated in the following images

(source: various design blogs)

A kitchen island! Oh, the entertaining possibilities!! Pull up a stool and serve the kids. Roll out cookie dough. Prepare a big meal for one of our parties. Spread out for art projects, school projects or craft projects. A place to unload your groceries. You see the advantage, right?

And a kitchen island must be practical as well. NO SINKS OR STOVE TOPS littering the top of a kitchen island!!! No exceptions! That's one thing that gets my panties in a bunch as I peruse kitchens.

(So this island is very nearly perfect. Except for the unnecessary sink. Grr!)

I never thought I'd be the sort of girl who gets dizzy at the idea of a white sale. Or toasted vanilla colored cabinets with antique detailing and moldings. But you can never tell these things about a person. It's not so much the color of the cabinets that rings my bell so much as the idea of having enough cabinets AND a pantry. Adequate space so that all is not crammed into a coat-closet sized pantry and utilizing precious garage space with whatever doesn't fit in the pantry or my 5 shallow kitchen cabinets.

Dear hardwood floors, I WANT YOU. *drool*

Right up there next to a sink and a dishwasher, I consider WINDOWS to be an absolute must-have. Right now I can count the number of windows in my current kitchen on one hand. In fact, I don't need a hand at all because the number of windows in our kitchen right now is a big fat goose egg. ZERO. I often imagine myself cooking in the confines of a very dark cave whenever I'm in my kitchen.

Maybe it's the artist in me, but natural lighting is so much more inspiring to the imagination and creativity.

Plus, you can have house plants (not that I would, but that I could...).

And you can also watch the kids playing outside while you're making dinner (safety feature!).

I'm admittedly, ho-hum about counter tops. We're not thrilled with our laminate counter tops--they're very BASIC and quite frankly UGLY. I love the idea of darker counter tops with lighter cabinets and while I think granite is awesome and would LOVE to have it in our next house, I also see dollar signs and if I had to splurge on something in the kitchen it would most definitely be windows or cabinets over granite.

One thing I don't get is tile counter tops. Talk about impractical! NO TILE counter tops in our next house!

A kitchen with cabinets + an island + a window = WINNER!

I can't help myself. This next kitchen makes me giddy.

With the exception of that eye-sore sink in the island, this could almost be the most perfect kitchen ever.

And it's probably more idealistic than realistic. Love the ceiling, though!

This is also rather remarkable...

There is a lot to love about this kitchen, but that second single window, flanked by cabinets, is on my secret dream house wish list. You're going to think I'm weird, assuming you haven't already come to that sorry conclusion, but I can picture raising bread dough on a summer's afternoon next to that window.