Galley Makeover Begins!

We had planned to take the boat over to Village West Marina this weekend to fuel up but it was not to be as I have been sick.  We actually still went to the boat Friday night but we came home Saturday morning as I just did not have the energy for the trip.  It's a shame because it is absolutely beautiful out today.  So instead we did a little on line resarch today for our galley!

We have been talking for months about redoing the galley.  It started with a thought of getting rid of the butcher block countertop as it is starting to come apart around the sink.  It was put down directly on top of the original laminate so I thought we could just take it up and perhaps relaminate if needed.  Of course nothing is ever that simple.  The old countertop must have started to fail around the sink so the old countertop is gouged out for maybe 1/2" to an inch around the sink.  So "simply" removing the butcher block was out as that would leave some holes around the sink.  So, if we are going to replace the whole countertop, why not redo the galley how we want it?

Currently there is a microwave over the refrigerator.  We have been looking at replacing it with a convection microwave but all the ones we saw were pretty pricey and didn't have great reviews.  Last weekend we were visiting on someone's boat and noticed they had a convection microwave and no oven.  They said they loved the unit and it works great as an oven.  We looked it up online and it was actually reasonably priced.  However Matt felt it was a little too small to take the place of the oven.  Some googling found the same brand and model in a larger size!  Of course the larger one was not quite so reasonably priced.  We pondered it for awhile, then ordered it from Home Depot while they were having a ten percent off sale on home appliances.  We figured we'd try it at home for a bit and make sure it actually works before we start ripping things out of the boat...

Our stove is a three burner Princess stove and oven combo. The stove has a vertical metal strip on each side which makes it impossible to place a pot on the burner properly. You have to have the pan scooted to the middle of the stove as the pan position is constrained by the metal strip.   Also there is no way to actually use all three burners at one time, unless you have kiddie play set size pans. Not that we have ever made anything on the boat that required us to have three pans going at once... So we decided to replace the stove with a two burner smooth surface drop in stove top.   With the convection microwave, we won't need an oven anymore.  Like I said, we were planning to try out the convection microwave at home before going further with the project, but since we were just sitting around to day with nothing to do... we ordered it from Defender.  The one we picked out was pretty pricey and we really felt like we were splurging on it.  Imagine our delight when we added it to the cart and the actually price was about 40% less!

We plan to put the new convection microwave on the refrigerator in place of the current microwave, and the stove top will go where the stove and oven combo is now... which leaves us the space where the oven is with nothing in it, just begging for something... so we plan to get a dishwasher.  Yes we are lazy, so what?  We come to the boat to relax, not wash dishes!  We had seen an "RV" dishwasher online that can be used on a countertop or built in and had found a store nearish the boat that had it.  We stopped by on our way home Saturday and the man at the store couldn't find any dishwashers in stock and he didn't think they carried them anymore since they moved locations.  This was a couple days after I called and was told they had them in stock.  Annoying.  So today Matt did some browsing online and we decided we'd get the stove top in and the figure out how much room we REALLY have below it and then decide what to get.  We may do the "RV" one or maybe a dishwwasher "drawer."  We will have to see.  We definitely won't leave a gaping hole under the stove.

So what about the counters?  Looks like they are going to be phase II, which will also include a new sink and faucet.  We can't decide what we want and most of the options are pricey so we don't want to rush into a decision.  In the meantime we can buy some butcher block from Ikea to mount the stove top in and just replace that section.  Funny how the thing that started the whole project isn't actually going to be FIXED in the project.  Though maybe I can convince Matt we might as well splice in TWO pieces of butcher block as long as we are doing one and we can replace the worst of the countertop sooner rather than later?  Again, I guess we will have to see.

Meanwhile we still have the wildcat to replace AND we still need fuel.  Soon, soon.  Very soon.