Monday, January 23, 2012
Happy Happy Day! Cakebrain’s Kitchen Reno is complete!
Join me for a personal tour...
Today I moved the last of the glassware into my cupboards. I was surprised at how long it took me to wash and move things back in. I purged some items and donated them along the way.
Let's start the tour of my brand new kitchen. I’ll even let you look in some of my cupboards and drawers!
My marble counter feels wonderful. It’s a honed Statuario Marble.
Everything tastes better cooked on the Wolf Range! See that copper pot on the range? A few years back I travelled to France all by myself and toured Normandy, the Alsace region and practically half of France that summer staying with friends and relatives of my lifelong friends V & P (V is a penpal I have been corresponding with since high school!) I purchased the copper pot in a little town in Normandy called Villedieu-les-Poêles that specialized in making these heavy duty gems! It’s got a Mauviel Villedieu stamp on it.
This information is from the Mauviel site: “In a Normandy village called Villedieu-les-Poêles, which is located near the Mont-Saint-Michel, Mr. Ernest Mauviel established the Mauviel manufacturing company.
Villedieu-les-Poêles, “the city of copper”, has an 800 year heritage of copper manufacturing. The strength and foundation for Mauviel's manufacturing expertise is based upon this rich tradition of copper manufacturing that has been handed down from generation to generation.
Since the very early years, by offering the highest quality products, Mauviel has been a fixture in the professional and commercial markets.
Today, Mauviel continues to offer the professional chef, products that are unsurpassed in quality and design. These same products are now also available to household markets.
Throughout the world Mauviel products are used by many famous chefs and professionals. With 1,000 products, Mauviel offers several ranges of high quality products made from copper, stainless steel or aluminum. Each range is crafted with elegant style and is designed to meet the needs of the most discerning professional and household cooks.
All ranges of Mauviel cookware products bring performance and pleasure to successful chefs, and to all those who aspire to become chefs.”I lugged that copper pot in my luggage all through France, by myself (along with a backpack and carry-on) as I travelled the Paris underground. No elevators or escalators…c’est dommage! I heaved the luggage above my head onto the trains, the subways and all sorts of transportation on the continent and in England until it came back with me to Vancouver. Now it has a lovely little spot on my new range and I am loving using it. It’s one heavy sucker.
Friendly French men would stop mid-stride as they saw me lugging my stuff and ask me if I needed assistance. Ça va? they would ask…and I smiled, nodded and replied Ça va. merci! This happened more often than I could count. I must have looked like a mule (and obviously I was just as stubborn as one as I was determined to get that pot back to Canada!) One day, remind me to take a picture of my special bowls…purchased in a little village in France and made by some nuns from the convent nearby.
The lighting under the cabinets casts a lovely glow and highlights the glass mosaic tile backsplash. I am very happy with the backsplash. It’s a nice contrast to the all-white kitchen.
I didn’t decide on my cabinet and drawer pulls until the last minute. In the end, these pulls from Richelieu were perfect as they went well with the Sub-Zero handle and the Wolf oven handle.
These are “blum” drawers. The cabinets all have a “soft-touch closure”. So you can’t slam them hard even if you wanted to. A good thing since I have kids.
Stomach insisted on buying a new pot. He wanted a 4qt All-Clad. I told him to buy the steamer insert for it too since we always steam veggies.
The flowers in the foreground on the marble island have lilies in them. I detest the smell of lilies and was clipping off all the stamens from the centres that I could find. But the sickly sweet smell still lingered in the air. The flowers are my mom’s…for her bday; so what could I do? generally my girls and Stomach know not to buy me lilies for me or I’ll have a fit.
The Le Mans corner unit. I have two corners with these units. This is way too cool! It swings in an “S” pattern so you can access everything easily.
Couldn’t figure out where to put my KitchenAid. This seemed as good a place as any.
The roll-top drain board on my Franke sink has been proving to be extremely useful. I love it. The stainless steel faucet is locally made by Valley Acrylic and is all ceramic inside. Supposedly, most faucets are plastic inside. Ceramic is supposed to last longer.
I had to buy a new bread bin because having all those piles of bread on the counter just wasn’t looking so great. We purchased this one from Williams Sonoma on Granville St.
In the corner is my Gaggia Titanium. Aaaah! Finally I can have espressos again! Next to it is my Penguin Soda Charger. I drink an inordinate amount of club soda everyday. All I do is use the Co2 cartridge to inject bubbles into plain ol’ filtered Vancouver tap water. I like it plain but I can add syrups like Cola, Gingerale and whatever the heck I want to, to taste. I’ve saved myself a lot of $ and dealing with empty Perrier and San Pellegrino bottles. I drank tons of club soda too. All the empty cans are a distant memory.
This SubZero fridge is the price of a small domestic vehicle. It apparently has an air filter and water filter in it that helps with ensuring no icky smells develop inside. As well, this helps preserve the freshness of veggies and other foods. So far, it has proven to actually do that. I buy Costco bags of veggies and they are still fresh looking though they’ve been in there for 2 weeks.
My kids have been drinking more water because the fridge has easy access for water and ice on the door. I like the convenience of the ice maker and love my soda water ice cold. It’s a good thing.
Here’s a view of the Wolf microwave oven and oven.
Above the microwave is storage for my sheet pans and bakeware. Really handy-dandy. Love it!
Here’s my new pantry. The mechanism inside slides everything out as you open the door so you can reach things in the back easily.
Here’s the pantry door opening up to show you all my goodies. As you can see, the shelves on the door are stationary but as you open the door, the shelves on the left slide move out as you open.
These shallow shelves are under my island. The other side has cupboards. I use the shallow shelves for easy access to all my cake decorating junk. As you can see I have a lot of cake decorating paraphernalia. Actually, I have another area of my home dedicated to storing all my other cake decorating tools, bakeware and whatnot. It all didn’t fit into my kitchen believe it or not.
Look closely at my shallow shelves. See those metal grommets lined all the way up inside my cabinet? Those are for the adjustable shelves. There are little stainless steel pegs that fit in them and support the shelving. I was pleasantly surprised that Chris, my cabinet maker had added this detail.
It's raining outside...
I intend to start baking again very shortly. There’s still a 4mm depth of construction dust all over my house. See me back in February for a reinvigorated baking fervor! I might even post savoury foods now that I have better light in my kitchen for taking photos! Leave me a comment and let me know what you think of my new kitchen!
- My contractor: Will McPhail from McPhail Renovations
- Counters: Marble Art
- Cabinets: Build Momentum
- Franke Sink: Save More
- Stainless Steel Faucet: Valley Acrylic
- Appliances (Wolf range, oven, microwave, SubZero fridge, Ventahood): from Colony Home Furnishings 1075 Roosevelt Crescent
North Vancouver, British Columbia
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