First Thanksgiving in our new kitchen!

Let the cooking begin in a space that can actually fit two active cooks! In our old, very small kitchen, we had to cook in shifts or just annoy each other. Today, it’s a joy!

Here’s the start of the feast day. (As always, click on the photos or videos to get a full view.)

This week, the drywall/paint team repaired the kitchen ceiling for the fourth time because of repeated damage from the renovation of the master bathroom above it. That bathroom is nearly complete—or so we thought. Last night, Dan mopped the floor after the team finally took up the protective cardboard and then I rinsed off the tile walls to ensure there was no stray debris. When I came downstairs we realized that the shower drain “works” by dripping through the kitchen pendant lights over the island.

After REcleaning the kitchen and a slow morning of consuming news and coffee, we are the cooking brigade and we’ll share the adventure of a new kitchen in an old house for our first big holiday. Yum one:

As the people clean the kitchen, it’s time for Saoirse to nap in the nearby Morning Room, which is also Cathy’s office:

And by the early afternoon, I realize that the (brand new) refrigerator is a disgusting conglomeration of everything Dan wants to keep handy. Time for spring cleaning (because, gross) and to fit in what we actually need for the day. We have a second refrigerator in the basement that can store things we don’t use every day so the main fridge can stay clean and organized with fresh food.

We haven’t actually moved into the new kitchen completely because we lose access to the room periodically to replace the counters (three times now) and fix the ceiling repeatedly, so we often have to search the basement “pantry” for infrequently used items, like sage for the sage stuffing. You guessed it, we didn’t have it! (South Bend Kroger, strangely, for the win with fresh sage!)

Our dining room is still the Keeper of Stuff We Need To Put Away Or Donate, so we’re eating in the kitchen today. Perhaps by Christmas (fingers crossed) our lives will be back to normal. One note about having serious professionals do your reno—despite the cost. They are experts in ways you did not anticipate. To wit: the door on the center left, below, is the original swinging door that goes into the dining room. For the entire almost nine years we have lived here, and presumably many years before, this nearly 80-year-old door regularly scraped against the frame. When the team replaced it near the end of the reno, they repaired the “fit” and mechanisms so it now works like it did in 1937, when Glenn and Agda had their first Thanksgiving in their new home.

Well, our Thanksgiving meal was not our best—and we’re typically pretty good at it! It was yummy, nonetheless and it was just for us, so it was a wonderful way to test the new space for a culinary joint effort. Being able to work in the space without crowding each other to an annoying degree was wonderful. Having the counter space to work on multiple projects at the same time was beyond amazing.

Yet we are still so barely moved in that things aren’t where we are used to them being (or, frankly, know where they are. It was a terrific first effort and showed us so much about cooking together in our new kitchen.

What a gift!