Nov 30, 2015 95 Comments

Just One Cookbook Kitchen Tour!

I’m super excited today to finally share my new kitchen with you! I’m so sorry it took us forever to complete making the kitchen tour video. It was hard to find time to edit and film additional footage for the video on top of our regular recipe production, but we finally managed to finish it!

For those of you who requested my kitchen tour video, thank you so much for your interest! Many of you asked me to open all the cabinets, so I really did! 🙂

If you’re fairly new to my blog, I had my kitchen and its surrounding area of the house renovated this past summer when we were in Japan for two months. When we came back, it was supposed to be finished or close to finish, but due to the complications with the structural support for the house, the renovation extended another 2 months.

Before I give you a tour of my kitchen, I will share a little bit about the story behind my kitchen renovation.

Previous Just One Cookbook Kitchen

Here’s the fun part. Most of you probably didn’t know what our old kitchen looked like because all of our videos only focused on my hands and the cutting board area. So let me show you…

Outdated kitchen with old cabinets

Our house was built in 1976 and the cabinets were close to 40 years old. We did update the counter top and some of the appliances several years ago, but that was pretty much the only change we made for the kitchen since we moved in 8 years ago.

Kitchen with no window

As you could see in the photos, the kitchen has absolutely no window. The closest window (the one you see above) is the sliding door in our breakfast nook. Because the kitchen itself has no window, it was always dark and the lights were always turned on even during daytime.

Not enough storage and counter space

There was a pantry on the left side that is not shown in above picture, but what you see is pretty much all the space I had in the kitchen. Because of the lack of storage space, I used to have shelves in our living room and family room where I keep extra plates, pots, and props for photo shoots.

Since we started making videos, we also realized we didn’t have enough space for me to cook and for Mr. JOC to place his camera equipment and lights for filming.

Solution to the problems

To make better videos, we needed a kitchen island with range top facing toward the camera, and a large space around the kitchen island for prepping.

To create the space, we decided to knock down the fireplace that was in the family room. This fireplace had divided the family room from the kitchen and laundry area.

Here’s what it looked like after the wall was removed.

Where did the fireplace go? We actually used it to vent our range hood. We still don’t have any windows to get natural light in the kitchen, so we decided to go with the white color theme kitchen to bring out the brightness. In addition, we used the glass cabinets to make it more airy.

We combined the space of the old laundry room, kitchen, and breakfast nook to create a long kitchen. By removing the fireplace wall, we can place the kitchen island facing toward the family room. This way Mr. JOC can set up his camera equipment in the family room area.

If you are interested in some construction photos, check my Instagram #JOCremodel.

The Kitchen Tour!

Ready to look around in my kitchen? If you have any specific question, please leave a comment on my YouTube video and check out the description box below the video for additional information. Now come on in!

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