Fargo, North Dakota.

This week, Ritva begins our July of guest challenges with “Inspiration Found in the Kitchen.” She writes, “I am hosting this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge with a theme of Inspiration found in the kitchen. That is often a place I find something to photograph in an hour of need.” You can read her entire challenge post here.

Her challenge allows me to share a story of our kitchen inspiration. The photo above features our newly remodeled kitchen after completion in 2015.

After we retired, we started enjoying our winters in a small house in Buckeye, Arizona. Early in the morning on February 1, 2014, I got a call from one of our condo neighbors. There had been a fire in our North Dakota condo unit resulting in severe damage. Our neighbor texted several cell phone photos of our unit. A fire of undetermined origin broke out in the ceiling of our unit destroying the ceiling above our kitchen and dining area. It burned through our upstairs neighbor’s floor and their refrigerator almost fell through the opening into our unit.

Most of the rest of the unit was severely smoke damaged, but the compromised ceiling and floor structure that separated us from the unit above was not repairable. The condo building insurance and our condo owners’ insurance companies authorized the complete gutting of the two units so the ceiling and floor joist structure above could be replaced and rebuilt to then-current building codes.

The above images were taken from the time we moved into the unit in 2012. The building was constructed in 1984 and we purchased the unit from the original unit owners. With us being in Arizona all winter, we decided to sell our single-family home. We thought it would be nice to not have yard care and snow removal issues while we were gone.

After the fire, it would take until November 2014 before we could move back into our unit, and in the meantime, we would need to work with a contractor to design and rebuild our unit. We stayed in Arizona until mid-April when it was finally time for the rebuild project to start, then we rented a small apartment during the reconstruction.

We made a few minor design changes elsewhere in the unit, but we concentrated on a new kitchen design. Our house in Arizona featured a kitchen with only a small “pony wall” separating the kitchen area from the family room. Our inspiration for the replacement kitchen featured an open concept and we thought it would be a great way to open up our Fargo kitchen, dining, and living room into a great room concept.

The kitchen and dining area increased in size due to the lack of a limiting wall separating them. There was no longer a need for a second small table and chair set to take up space in the kitchen area. Our new dining table expands to accommodate guests when needed.

Our great room area is open all the way to the master bedroom wall. We were happy that our stained glass window covers survived the fire with minimal repairs. The extreme wide-angle lens setting on my cellphone camera makes the space look larger than it really is.

In her post, Ritva wrote, “Now I have one request and hope you play along. Please share a photo of your favorite cup.” My Yeti cup is used daily and goes with me whenever I travel. Her request allowed me to also feature the wet bar we added as an upgrade to our condo after the fire. It’s in the living room and was carved out of some of the space in a store room. There used to be a hallway wall between the storeroom and the living room. We opted to lose the extra wall and add that space to the great room area. For a closer look at these images, you can find them in my Flickr album here.

Thanks to Ritva for hosting this week’s challenge. Next week, Mr. Philo of Philosophy Through Photography will be our guest host. For more information on joining the challenge each week, check here.

John Steiner