Impromptu Change and a Little Kitchen Envy

Do you ever get random motivation to clean or reorganize something in your house? I have moments that prompt me to clean something that isn't normally cleaned on a weekly basis. Like a trip to the grocery store will inspire me to completely clean out the fridge: pull out the drawers and give them a good soapy scrub, toss out expired dressings and reorganize the entire thing.

This weekend I was motivated by some gorgeous glassware I bought from Pottery Barn. I wanted to add some more pretty clear glasses to the shelves above the sink that hold our dishes and glassware. 

In order to add these I needed to do some reorganizing. This is how the shelves have been looking for the most part since taking the doors off a few years back.

Rather than just squeezing the glasses in somewhere, I took this as an opportunity to take everything off the shelves and give them all a good wipe down. I needed to reorganize the shelves anyway, so why not give them a scrub? To continue on my cleaning, I took some of the dishes or glassware that isn't used as often and ran them through the dishwasher to get rid of some dust that may have accumulated. Obviously the plates and glasses we use regularly are washed almost daily and didn't need to go in the dishwasher.

Once everything was wiped down, ran through the wash, dried and put away, the shelves looked good as new!

Notice anything different? Yup, I decided to take the doors off the two cabinets above the sink. I've been considering it for a while and took this impromptu cleaning as the perfect opportunity to do so. I grabbed the baskets off the top of the cabinets and used them in the top shelf to hold bottles, nipples, pump accessories, and other miscellaneous Lucy's items. I put some of the fun bright bowls I've purchased from Anthropologie on the shelves to add a little color. This space looks so much bigger with more open cabinetry.

While I like how it looks, the dark blue backsplash does clash a bit with the colors on the shelves. My dream would be to have a kitchen with white cabinets and white subway tile backsplash. Then I could use all sorts of bright Anthro dishes on the shelves to brighten up the space. The cabinets we have are in great shape and it would be foolish to repaint them (especially considering we aren't staying in this house for more than a few years). Also the tile work is gorgeous and done really well, it's just not my personal taste. And again, it would be wasteful to replace perfectly good tile in a house that we don't plan to make our 'real' house. These are a few of the many things that get added to my Big Girl House Wish List (Like a kitchen with a big window! But more on that another time.)

If you decide to remove cabinet doors like this, one thing I would suggest is is to keep all the screws together with the cabinet door they correspond to. Rather than putting them into a ziplock bag tossed a drawer to get lost or forget what they go to, I wrapped the loose screws in painters tape and taped them to the back of the door. The painters tape is gentle enough not to damage the wood like duct would, and when the time comes to sell the house we can easily put the doors back on.

Speaking of dream kitchens with white cabinets, we had a family party over my brother's house this past weekend and before people started showing up and before we started cooking I snapped a few shots of his kitchen. I love my brother's kitchen. It has so many elements of my dream big girl kitchen: a large farmhouse sink, white cabinets, gorgeous countertops, and a window (I love me some natural sunlight). He uses the glassfront cabinets to display his glassware above his dry bar on the counter. What guy doesn't have a bar right in their kitchen?

Another angle. The stovetop is built into the island - I love that. And a vegetable sink! Perfect area for prep work and cooking. Plus you don't have to wash your veggies over your dirty prep dishes. You can see his kitchen table at the far end of the room by the window. He also has two stools on the opposite side of the island to serve as a breakfast bar. 

Here is the last angle. Look at all that cabinetry/storage! I would have a blast filling up that space. I purchased the "Good Times" sign above the doorway for my brother as part of a little inside joke we have. You can see that he painted an accent wall a deep red on one side of the kitchen. That color is mirrored in the dining room that you can see a little bit of in the first picture.

My brother's house is still a work in progress, but I will share more pictures with you once it's more complete.

When my brother first moved in, I had serious hardwood floor envy. I pined after these floors until Jordan and I saved up enough to get our own hardwood. Now I just have kitchen envy!

Have you all learned by now that I tend to do things on a whim? I'm the type of person who decides they want to do something and have to do it right then and there.

Any impromptu mini-makeovers in your house?

What's on your dream house list?