Prune Kitchen constructions

Checkout the slide show above to see Prune kitchen construction from start to end.

Last month, building permit of my private kitchen addition was finalized. I like to write about building my new kitchen, named Prune kitchen.
Because my first son moved out of Seattle to attend university and a tenant moved out, we decided to move back to our previous house. It was the house where I met my husband,Daniel, and got married 20 years ago. We had wedding party in the backyard of this house. The move was to celebrate our 20 years of our marriage in addition to cut our expenses.
We decided to move to the downstairs 2 bedrooms and 2 baths portion. It was good enough for a couple with one teenage son. The kitchen downstairs was very small. It is too small to store all my kitchen tools and extra food. So my nice husband decided to design a kitchen addition. We discussed how kitchen should look like. I wanted a kitchen where I can cook with others and teach cooking classes. Kitchen need to have a lot of storage which I can find ingredient easily. We decided to make our kitchen practical as commercial kitchen but is still for our private use. He submitted the plan in April and the construction started quickly. He hired contractors to build foundation and frame of the house, do electric wiring, and dry walls. Our roof was done by a neighbor next-door. Daniel did much work by himself to save money. I selected the color of interior and outside house and bought paint and building materials. Our weekends’ family activity was to paint the house inside and out.
Daniel bought used 3 compartment sinks and commercial starless steel counter top. Kitchen addition was mostly completed in September and we moved to current house.
Daniel called inspectors for the final plumbing and building permit last month and the building passed the inspection. I love my brand new large kitchen. We named this kitchen Prune kitchen because we had to cut our favorite Italian plum tree in order to build the kitchen addition. I have been using my kitchen for various cooking events. I will be writing about it to food blog soon.

Sightseeing around Hiroshima in One day

These are the photos and a video from my trip.

My parents live in a town called Saka, 20 minutes train ride from Hiroshima. During my visit to my parents’ house, my best friend in Tokyo came to see me. This was her first visit to Hiroshima. I planned sightseeing trip with her to go to interesting place to visit while we could talk.
We met at Hiroshima JR(Japan Railway) station at 10:00am and took JR train and short ferry ride to Miyajima. (http://www.miyajima-wch.jp/index_e.html You can watch interesting video on this site.)Miyajima is famous for Historical Shrine and Torii gate built in the water. We walked around and ate roasted oyster and cooked conger eel on the rice which are caught locally. (http://www.miyajima-wch.jp/en/tradition.html) We visited Old Shinto Shrine and a large old Buddhist temple.
Next we went back to Hiroshima city to the Peace Memorial park. http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3400.html). We walked around A-Bomb dome and the park. We had leave without seeing Peace memorial museum and it will be her next visit.
Finally we went back to the JR Hiroshima station. Hiroshima is famous for Okonomiyaki(Checkout http://www.japan-guide.com/r/e100.html0. We went to the second floor of the station building to have the Hiroshima style Okonomiyaki at Reichan2 where local Hiroshima residents’ favorite Okonomiyaki restaurant.
We were full and happy spending nice time together. We departed to catch our train home at 6:00pm. My friend called me and told that it was one of her best days in her life.