A Little of This, A Little of That

So, do ya'll remember that poor kitchen of mine with walls and shelves in primer and paint swatches all over the place.  It's now worse.  And better.  On Tuesday, I decided that the little swatch I had on the kitchen wall wasn't big enough to make a decision from, so I exhausted the whole sample can on the wall.

Every time I walk into the room, it's a different color.  It's taunting me.  It looks light in this pic, but sometimes it looks darker, and when it's darker I can't decide if it looks too dark because I have it up against ultra white (as opposed to a cream/off-white color) or because it's really too dark.  You see why I have such trouble settling on a color?  Anyways, I now have an e-mail in to one of the designers of the room that inspired my color choices.  Maybe if she's kind, she'll share her color names with me.  

One of these days, I'm going to settle on a color and hang the wainscoting in the living room and we'll start painting.  Aside from removing the counter tops, there was still a list of little projects that needed to happen in the kitchen before then, so I set about them.  

1. Finish getting rid of the counter-top butcher block.

Most of the knives were residing in the new in-drawer butcher block but A. they didn't all fit and B. I wasn't quite ready to give up having my favorite knives at the ready.  At the same time, I'm really trying to clear off the high-profile permanent fixtures from the island.  They're really breaking up the room.  I considered mounting a magnetic knife strip to the side of the island, but that sounded too dangerous for both the puppy's inquisitive nose and for the buttox of the person doing dishes.  Soloution? Make a flat island-mounted butcher block.

I found a piece of wood (I think it was a 1x8) long enough that my butcher's knife wouldn't overhang and drew lines just a hair wider than my knives, with 1/2 in between them except for the kitchen shears, they needed more space.  

I had Nick cut some scrap pieces of the extremely thin plywood/paneling that we used on the bookcases to the width of my little spacers (of course I made sure that it was a tad thicker than my knives).    We glued them on to the 1x8 and a sheet of the paneling on top of that.  

Once the glue was dry, we trimmed up the edges and mounted it.  Whadda ya think?

2. Install a flip-out scrubby holder.  

This one was harder than it looked and DEFINITELY required 2 sets of hands if u have a double-bowl sink. It was just a kit and i just followed the directions, but it was a hard one.  

3. Install sliding garbage cans in the gaping hole in the island affectionately known as "Sadie's Cave".  She likes to hang out in there.  

That was terribly cute, but she got hair all over my air popper.  2 more kits later and we have: 

I know the "door" isn't much, but give it a handle and a coat of paint and it ought to match the rest of the island.  

Only one more small project left to go.