Saturday, March 14, 2015

Kitchen Design: Coffee Station?

I decided that I needed some redecoration in our kitchen since I've been working on sprucing up other areas of the house.  I don't have the best interior decoration sense, I'm usually paralyzed by the choices and then don't do anything.  I really liked hiring the decorator who did our dining room, but she's pretty expensive so I figured I could handle this on my own.

Currently to the left of our sink we have a rust-colored star that I bought for really cheap at the farm supply store because I like stars and it was cheap.  The color doesn't go with anything, there is no star theme, it's just a single star. Our kitchen doesn't have a lot of space for decorating because we have an 8-foot chalkboard that takes up the one big wall and the rest is cupboards, so this is it.  
Current space, above the garbage, left of the sink.
I just want to mention that I totally love my hanging produce basket that you see in this picture, so glad I got it.  The fruit is at-hand, but out of the way.  Plus they say if you have fruits and veggies visible, you'll eat them more and be healthier.  

After mentioning to my friend Renae that I didn't know what to do with the space and asking for her help, I came up with the idea of a coffee station to hold all our coffee and tea supplies on the wall. I sketched up some ideas and looked on Pinterest for other inspiration.
Rough sketches of ideas for a coffee station.
I think I'll go with either some open shelves or a cupboard-box with sides.  It'll have space for most of our mugs, which currently don't look so fancy because half of them live on top of our toaster oven and others are stored away in an upper cupboard since I have so many.  It'll also be storage for our coffee maker, the sugar container, coffee filters, tea boxes, etc. The coffee maker comes out on the countertop space below the star when we want to make coffee and then is stored on top of the refrigerator when we're not using it.  The space next to the sink is also where the blue compost bin goes and the dirty dishes, so the coffee maker can't be out on the counter the whole time because it gets too crowded there.  Having a thoughtful, dedicated space for the coffee maker would make me happy rather than just shoving it on top the fridge with other random things like the immersion blender and a basket of Play-Dough toys. 
Love my drawing skills!  Coffee maker, tea boxes, sugar, coffee, and mugs. Plus a sassy phrase!
I would love if we could have enough space in the coffee station to move the radio from our kitchen table.  We can put it up pretty high and then just press the "on" button and listen to NPR like we do every morning. It also has a little remote control so we can use that to turn it on. This would actually be the first time we'd use the remote! 
Space hogging silver radio on the kitchen table.
The Cooking Light calendar and fresh flowers are ok though.
As you can see from this picture, the chalkboard tray is a catchall for random things, like a water marker set, the radio antenna, a container of glue, a luggage tag, etc.  

I'm pretty exited about getting this in place but first I need to figure out if it's actually feasible, if we even have enough space to put this on the wall.  Then I need to figure out if I want to buy something from the store, ask Husband Jeff to make it, or try to make it myself.  I think I'll probably want to go custom-made since I want to make sure there's enough space for the coffee maker. 

I can put something decorative above the chalkboard, so if you have any great ideas for a long 14-inch tall space at the ceiling, let me know.

Wanna Chat?

I turned off the 'leave a comment' feature, so if you want to share what you're thinking about this or anything else, drop me an email at jhk1013 (at) gmail.com. It's so much more cozy than a comment, plus we can have a real conversation!