THE NEW KITCHEN!

So, these are the pictures that all 7 of you have been waiting for... the new kitchen!

Just for some background, we have slowly been making over our kitchen (among many other projects) since we moved into the house over 4 years ago. (And by "we," I mean Luke. Of course, I am a beacon of moral support, motivation and regular reminders...)

Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, we somehow don't have a full picture of our old kitchen (Kristi?), so allow me to reintroduce you in parts.

You may remember our stove "Old Yeller." (Hi, John!)

We replaced her with this shiny number.

And then added these Ikea shelves as an open pantry to an otherwise odd space and painted the wall a kermit green (because we were initially thinking bright, white cabinetry):

We hired our multi-talented friend Bill Shobe to add to our cabinets in order to make better use of our ceiling height.

We chose to build onto the cabinets that we had because they were still in good shape, we didn't want to create a lot of unnecessary waste, and the only thing we could have afforded was the cheapest Lowe's cabinet and they off-gas. This way we could reface the cabinets by ordering real wood doors from kitchen doors online. It added a lot of work on our part, but we never went a day without using the kitchen because we never had to tear out the old stuff and put in the new. I was thankful for that.

We also added a microwave.

We didn't have the right size cabinets by the frig so Bill created new ones. We used to have a stack of plastic drawers on the bottom and Bill created permanent ones.

We also had the bottom cabinets on the left side converted into a set of small drawers and a pull-out trash/recycle bin (not pictured). Hi, Noelle!

Next went the old, broken tile!

Luke put down sub-flooring.

And after 2 late night tries, we got the slate-like vinyl flooring in that we liked.

Then with the help of our talented friends at Aesthetic Answers, we picked out a better green color to match our biscotti maple cabinets and a mosaic tile backsplash with greens, tans, and copper.

Then came the black granite counter top (Bye, Bye, YELLOW!), the free undermount sink (with counter top purchase), and the not-free new faucet. I had no idea how expensive faucets were!

And finally, the cabinet doors were painstakingly put on one at a time. Since August, Luke and I have been spending a few hours a week in the evenings to measure, cut, line, and trim the cabinet edges with matching maple self-adhesive. Then Luke would drill and secure the doors onto the cabinets and then the handles onto the doors.

I found the nickel handles online after almost 2 hours of searching for just the right ones. There are way too many drawer pull options out there.

You can also see the under cabinet lighting that Luke and Bill put in. I am no longer chopping in my shadow - Yippee!

Our aesthetic friends, Scott and Amy, suggested that we run the back splash just up the center of the wall, so instead of being overwhelming, it draws the eye to a focal point. They also recommended not adding onto the middle cabinet to break up the monotony of having all the cabinets the same height.

Geniuses, I tell ya.

So here is the left full view:

And a couple of shots of the right:

So just to help you remember, we went from this:

To this!

I am thrilled to have such a beautiful kitchen that uses the space so well. I feel like we were good stewards of how we spent our money and invested in the value of our home. I also love how the new doors look compared to the old 1970s, psychedelic ones.

The down sides of the (mostly) Do It Yourself method are that there are still little jobs that need to be finished, a detail-oriented person could find some small mistakes here and there and it just took a LONG time. But overall, we are very pleased and grateful.

Now if only it stayed looking this clean...