Going from a somewhat tiny house in San Francisco to this place meant it took a long time for us to use certain facets of the house, and to be honest there are certain bits we still don’t use and probably never will.
There are the cabinets way up in the blue room, the second tier of kitchen cabinets and the odd storage area above the laundry machines. These are all pretty much empty. Seeing as I am not a tall person, putting stuff in them doesn’t make a lot of sense. And since we tend to not be hoarders, storing stuff in all those cabinets isn’t going to happen, although I do have some batting/stuffing material above the laundry machines which I use for projects like the swanky ottoman I made as well as the cushions in the great room.
Another space we never used was the side alley of the kitchen we call the butler’s pantry. I have no idea if this area actually meets the standard definition of a butler’s pantry, but it’s an odd little offshoot of the kitchen and was part of the original build of the house.
Backing the story up a wee bit–Agent Smith and I have a penchant for lattes. When we lived in SF, we lived right next to a cafe, so in the mornings I would go down and grab a couple lattes. Over the years I became friends with many of the regular crowd that would sit for a half-hour and chat. While the coffee wasn’t stellar, it was sufficient.
Then we moved here, to a spot halfway up a mountain, where our nearest neighbor is a quarter-mile away and the nearest cafe is a twenty-minute drive. So we invested in a robust Krups coffeemaking option and it served us well for a number of years. It did everything–ground the beans, frothed the milk and produced perfectly ok lattes. The problem was it had a lot of moving parts. Those moving parts meant the machine needed regular stripdowns and thorough cleanings. Eventually its spiffy LCD screen of wondrous options was no longer enough to keep us enamored and we gave it to a friend.
After much research (and before we gave the Krups to said friend), we ended up with a seemingly simple Breville Oracle.
ZOMG! The little thing totally rocks. It makes lattes easily and, while it’s a bit more labor intensive (we have to brew and steam separate), it’s super easy to keep clean.
It also made us reevaluate our use of the kitchen counters. Suddenly the wee never-used sink in the butler’s pantry seemed like a good place to rinse out the metal milk-steaming jug, and the space next to the sink was perfect for the knock-box. We added in a silicone mat and a small hook to hang the wash rag, and suddenly the butler’s pantry is useful.
