The Big Debut!

Before I show you the kitchen, lets take a stroll back down memory lane and see what it used to look like to refresh your memory. (It will be a part of mine for a long, long time).

I hated how the cabinets went all the way to the ceiling. If you were to open them and see what we put on the top shelf, it was pretty much nothing, or just extra storage stuff that collected a lot of dust. I could never reach it, even with a stool.

The drawers didn't have rollers. It was just wood rubbing on wood and "wood-dust" would get into all sorts of things like my measuring cups. I got really used to re-rinsing.

The grout in the pink tile was permanently stained with everything you can imagine from its past. I could never get it clean. I will run far away if I see tiled countertops in a potential house again.

Also, because we had to put child-proof locks on our bottom cabinets, it somehow caused the cabinets to never be able to fully shut. Probably something to do with the old hinges. As you can see from the photo above, all of them are ajar. But really, they never shut well anyways.

Probably my #1 least favorite thing in the kitchen was the sink. It too, never looked clean. It was an old cast iron sink and everything stained it: spaghetti sauce, juice, blueberries, anything with color, it stained it that way for weeks. It literally had to be bleached to become white again. It was also really small and shallow.

This tall cabinet space used to be a pantry cabinet I think. But the previous owners took the lower cabinets out and put the microwave and garbage can there instead. I actually kinda liked having the garbage can out of the way and able to cover it up with the curtain (especially when Emmett finally discovered it).

Free standing stove, and dishwasher. A.K.A, countertops.

Also, the cabinets you see above the dishwasher is the only space I had for pantry/canned/packaged foods. It was very small.

Anyways, enough of memory lane.

Without further ado...here she is!

2 pantry cabinets on either side of the fridge.

Mike installed undermount lighting under the cabinets.

And I got a big beautiful sink that can hold dishes for days. ;)

Mike (with the help of several family members and friends) did all of the work and I couldn't be prouder. There were only a few times I doubted him (mostly in the electrical department). But he did an AWESOME job!

So was it worth it? Definitely. It was a dirty, dirty job (to the ENTIRE HOUSE). And there were times when we asked ourselves "why did we decide to do this?" But I'm sooo glad I don't have my old kitchen anymore. You just have to suffer through a month or so of torture to get there. We still aren't completely finished yet. We still have to do baseboards, windowsills and a little bit of painting, but as far as the kitchen set up goes, its completely done!

We had a lot of help along the way. Neighbors, family, and friends offered tools, their muscles, dinner, and their time on multiple occasions and most without being asked. We appreciated it so much!

Now, who wants to come over for dinner?

A New Floor

My mom has been asking me when I'm going to post pictures of our new floor. So since Emmett is finally in bed, and my husband is gussin around in the kitchen I think I finally have a moment.

We don't think the linoleum was very old. Probably no more than 10 years. I'm guessing when the previous owners were picking out color, they probably tried to find something that would match with the pink tile countertops that used to be there, and since they didn't want to conquer this horrible project of getting rid of them, they decided to pick out linoleum color that would somewhat go together and bear with it. (Until they moved and passed it on to the next crazy owners! ha!)

You might not be able to tell very well from the camera, but it was whitish gray, and had a very slight shade of pink in it.

Yeah, I loved it about as much as I loved the pink countertops.

This was a good day:

Backer-board is laid and ready to tile:

Mike's brother Nick was in Utah for the weekend, and offered to help lay tile with him on Saturday. They worked hard for about 12 hours all day.

After its laid, it has to dry for about 24 hours, until the cement underneath is hard. Then you have to grout the lines.

On Monday morning, my sister and her husband Nate offered to come down from Saratoga Springs and help. So Nate and Mike grouted the tile for about 6 hours. Laying tile is a lot of work, but you save yourself SO much money doing it yourself.

I'm sure neither of these guys really wanted to spend their Memorial Day weekend helping Mike lay tile, but I hope they know how much it helped!!! It saved Mike hours and hours of time down on his hands and knees, had he been alone!

Here are the pictures I took Monday night after the grouting was finished.

The blank spaces in the floor are where some cabinets are going to go. And you can see we are still missing baseboards... All in due time...

It looks so good!

It still needs to be sealed, and a few other details, but for the most part its done!