Initially the sink was outside about 40 feet from the temporary inside kitchen

Cooking was possible but it was a job.  I would begin a meal by trying to gather everything and then take all the veggies etc out to the sink to wash.  Of course, I rarely remembered everything the first time but I did get better at it over time. 

Prepping at a table is awkward.  If you sit the table is too high, if you stand its too low.  I got used to it but never really liked prepping at the table.  A lack of counter space was annoying but also a bit dangerous.  In my old kitchen I had tile countertops. On the very first night of cooking in the new displaced kitchen I put a hot pan on a pile of newspapers on the kitchen table.  Bad idea - the pan was too hot for the small pile of newspapers and the table got a permanent burnt ring on it.  That was day one of six months in the temporary kitchen.  It wasn't a good start!

Worse than cooking in the temporary kitchen, was the clean-up.  Generally it took several trips from the indoor kitchen to the outdoor sink to bring out all the dirty dishes.  The sink only had one very deep well so washing was awkward.  We'd pile the clean dishes on the laundry machine (it sat next to the sink) and take them inside in batches.  As our construction progressed the weather got worse and on some days it was raining while we were standing outside, on a piece of plywood, washing the dishes. Incidentally, doing the laundry wasn't much more fun, every load at least one piece of clothing got dropped into the dirt or mud.   Luckily the sink got moved inside before the more harsh winter weather hit. Nevertheless, we had the outside sink about 4 months and we did stand in mud many days washing the dishes.  

Initially, I thought the displaced kitchen was a nice challenge and a bit fun which was a good thing because if I'd hated it from the beginning I'm not sure I'd have made it through the remodel!  We could actually cook almost anything we wanted as long as it could be cooked on the stovetop or fit in the small oven which many of our pans could.  Cooking just took some planning and some things were harder to cook than others. 

It was a glorious day when the sink moved inside into what would become a bathroom about 20 feet from the temporary kitchen.

The most restrictive parts of the displaced kitchen were the sink location and getting accustomed to having less space and less cooking flexibility.  Looking back I have fond memories of the displaced kitchen and in comparison to the next version of the kitchen, or should I say lack of kitchen, it was a dream kitchen.  I'm not saying I'd want it for the long term but for all its problems it was at least usable and we had home cooked meals whenever we wanted.

After about 6 months of this kitchen we progressed to the next stage of our remodel in which the only room we had access to was our master bedroom.  This meant we no longer had any kitchen; instead we had a bedroom with a toaster oven and microwave which was less than optimal.  But I'll get into that next post....