Kitchen renovations are an exciting project, but they can be tough on daily family life. When you can't use the stove, your weekly meal planning goes out the window.
An ideal kitchen remodel effectively blocks off the kitchen from the rest of the house so your family can maintain privacy. Your contractors may be swift and extremely respectful of your space - but you still need a solution for family breakfasts and dinners.
How can you plan for safe, healthy family meals while your kitchen is under construction? With a little creativity, you can find both fun and functional solutions to being sans-kitchen for a few weeks or months.
Colonize your living room or dining room as the new kitchen. Turn a cabinet into your pantry and bring in a spare narrow table as a sidebar. Stock up on non-perishable foods and snacks that are easy to snag on your way through.
When it comes time for dinner with the family, you can all prep your picnic meals together and enjoy sandwiches or takeout in the comfort of the family living room. Kids, especially, enjoy using familiar rooms in new ways and may even get enthusiastic about rearranging the furniture for dinner time.
While you can live out of an ad-hoc pantry, you don't have to go without cold foods during the renovation. Ask your team to wheel the refrigerator (temporarily) into the living or dining space where your family can access it easily.
Depending on your floor, you may want to lay down cardboard or a small carpet to protect wood or tile from scraping when you move the refrigerator.
Stock your fridge with things like milk, salads, and lunch meat which make great picnic no-prep foods. When y our kitchen renovation is ready, simply ask that your refrigerator be moved back into its cozy nook to complete your all-new design.
One cooking surface you can still cook with is the outdoor grill. The grill on your back patio is the perfect way to enjoy this temporary time without a kitchen. Throw open the back doors and pick up a few steaks, burgers, and sausages at the grocery store. Enjoy a new kind of barbecue every night with the family.
Experiment with shish-kebabs and grilled vegetables, enjoy grill-warmed desserts, or throw a griddle on the grate and fry up some eggs and French toast for a grilled breakfast.
If you like to barbecue and the weather is good, this is a great solution to your kitchen renovation that everyone will enjoy. Possibly even your contractors and neighbors.
Are you a foodie, a locavore, or just enjoying a good restaurant experience? With your own kitchen out of service, now is a great time to explore the restaurants in your area.
Take your partner on an exploration of dates to various romantic nooks and charming strip-mall gems. Take the family to every family restaurant in a 30-mile radius or challenge yourself to try new cuisines you've never tried before.
By the time you're done tasting everything the city has to offer, your renovation will be complete.
If you are part of a tight-knit circle of family and friends, offer to bring groceries and/or throw an all-out dinner party when your kitchen is renovated in return for a few hosted dinners with your loved ones. This can be a great way to retain a stable routine for your children (ex; dinner with the grandparents) or to reconnect with your social circle with plans for your big post-renovation guest list in the near future.
A kitchen renovation doesn't have to mean living on fast food for the duration. Not hardly! From delicious backyard barbecues to a delightful dinner party schedule, your kitchen renovation might be the best thing that's happened to your palette all year. Contact us today to schedule your next amazing kitchen renovation.