Bad Kitchen Feng Shui

(Disclaimer: I am a sciencey-type girl, and I don't go in for all this new-age woo-woo, but this kitchen DOES have bad feng shui!) (and this picture was taken before we bought the house, so the furnishings are not ours.)

First of all, we're not wild about the color -- blue and white striped wallpaper? blue formica countertops? Well, the floor tiles are o.k. The wallpaper is something easily remedied -- the countertops a little less so. The skylight makes the room a lot brighter, and S. put up a cool pot rack.

We do like all of the counter space and cabinets -- there are even more cabinets and counter space in the upper right of the picture, to the right of the door that is part way open. The cabinet doors do have European hinges, which are nice -- the finish isn't what I would have chosen, but it is something I can live with. That ceiling fan has got to go -- either to be replaced by just a light, or a more streamlined design -- something that doesn't scream "Kountry".

The thing that is really poorly designed is the kitchen island -- correction, this is not an island -- it is more technically a kitchen peninsula, since it is attached on one side by an isthmus to a cabinet and another counter strip -- a true island would be completely surrounded by water, or in the case of a kitchen, flooring. (you can see the isthmus on the left side of this photo.)

The peninsula is too wide, for one thing. The peninsula impedes the flow of traffic from the dining area to the "cave" (more on the cave in another post). If it were 6 inches or so narrower, you wouldn't have that problem. The dishwasher is in the island, but when you open the dishwasher door, it almost touches the refrigerator -- you can't stand directly in front of the dishwasher to load it. And you can't have the dishwasher and the refrigerator open at the same time.

And that isthmus -- why? (although it does give you a little more counter and cabinet space) -- but anyway, let's suppose that you are having a nice dinner with your friends, when you realize that you have left the vinaigrette in the fridge. Can you go directly to the refrigerator to recover this? No, you have to walk all the way around the peninsula to get to it. A little while later, when someone wants some more white wine, you have to take this trek again.

So, one of these days we will remodel the kitchen -- convert the kitchen peninsula to a kitchen island, and scale it down a bit. Granite counters, perhaps? or even tile would be an improvement.

And how to pay for this, since I refuse to do this on credit, or second mortgage, etc? Well, if I cut out my almost daily non-fat double latte at work, I could save around $700 per year.

But I get so much joy from the latte -- the banter with the baristas, the caffeine high, the CALCIUM for goodness sake!

There is more than enough $ for this in the "household emergency fund"; however, that is for true emergencies -- like the new a/c system we'll probably have to get next year, since our a/c is around 12 - 15 years old, and it isn't even sitting on a concrete or rubber slab -- they just plopped it on the dirt for goodness sake! So far, I'm not considering "bad kitchen feng shui" as an emergency, just an aesthetic yecch.

Sigh, we're just going to have to live with bad kitchen feng shui for a little while longer.