Kitchen Before and After

In other news around here, we decided to do a small renovation to our kitchen. It was fine before, but oh so nice now!! We had possibly the cheapest cabinets ever with shiny laminate on them. It showed every finger print and is impossible to look clean for longer than 5 minutes. The counter top was a light blue/grey laminate, it just looked dated. Over the years that we have lived here we have replaced the fridge and dishwasher. We had moved our microwave to a counter behind our kitchen, which wasn't convenient because we then had a cord going across a doorway to get to a plug to actually use it. Normally that wouldn't be a big deal, but we microwave bottles probably 5-6 times a day. Well, our tax return came in and somehow Dan decided it was go time to upgrade!!

Here are some before pictures:

Also, the painted area behind the stove was terrible looking. I had taken a magic eraser to it to clean off grease from cooking. I have disliked the pendant lights since we moved into the house. But, they worked. There used to be 3, one broke so we've lived with 2 for a while now. The pendant on the right stopped working recently, so now we are down to one.

We tore down all the upper cabinets and replaced them with something similar from Ikea. Since we decided not to replace the lower cabinets we didn't want two very different door styles. Here is Dan surveying his removal skills.

Dan is installing new upper cabinets.

My Dad came over on the weekend to help us with the electrical work for the new microwave!! It is so nice to know people who can do these things for us, rather than having to hire someone.

Yay, new microwave!!

We had a new granite tile counter installed as well as a tile back splash. We decided to go with mini-slab granite tiles, they are 26" deep and 18" wide. I was going to do a nice white subway tile back splash with a glass tile accent. But, I was obsessing with these penny round tiles. I love them! Dan told me to go with the penny rounds and I'm happy that I listened to him. We also got a new faucet (our 3rd in 5 years!) and new sink. We are planning to paint the lower cabinets and replace the handles to match the round pulls on the uppers and the bin pull on the top drawer (pictured below). I still need to choose a new pendant light and I need to finish replacing the faceplates on the outlets.

If you are reading this and you live in the Portland area we can recommend a great guy to install tile for you...