Kitchen Remodel

Okay, this is actually posted out of order. It should have come before July 4th, but oh well. We remodeled our lovely 1980s kitchen between May and June of this past summer. It wasn't too bad, but there were a few weeks when we were eating out all the time, and it got really old. We learned when all of the "kids eat free" nights were at the local restaurants, and most of them have terrible menus for kids as we are all aware, but when it's every night, I thought they might turn into chicken nuggets! Anyway, we are so, so, so happy with how everything turned out. We would happily give out the name of our contractors, who we used on our old house as well. They were great.

One minor issue: on the evening that they painted our cabinets, we had a terrible storm. Naturally, we met out at a restaurant for dinner, and came home after the worst of the storm had passed. Unfortunately, Cooper (our dog) gets scared in storms (can you see where I'm going with this?) and apparently bashed through the protective plastic that separated the kitchen from the rest of the house and proceeded to knock wet drawers into each other, smudging and knicking a majority of them, got clumps of dog hair on cabinet doors, the door trim, and even chewed the edges off of some of the drawers! He has never done anything like this before! Needless to say, Cooper spent the rest of the evening in the bathroom. Kevin and I were both too upset to deal with him, plus he had oil-based paint on him that needed to dry. Our contractors fixed just about everything and it ended up not being as bad as we thought.

Morning of Day #1: cleaned out the kitchen.
Notice the drop ceiling and fluorescent light.

How about that border? And the model?

After work on Day 1

Ceiling raised and dry walled.
Recessed lighting cut and ready.

Walls and ceiling retextured and painted.

All lights installed

Backsplash removed

Floor tile going in - we went with 20" tiles

Backsplash going in

Backsplash completed (lots of discussion
over this design initially). Also, we had a trash compactor to the
right of the sink, which we had removed and the space changed
to a pull-out trash can - love it!

Floor complete - love the accent tile around the island.
Notice the Texas brackets are gone - yippee!

Everything covered, ready for painting. This was the
hardest part of the remodel. We really couldn't get in there - even to
the pantry and we had to stay out for over a week!

Pretty much done! Also had the island stained
a darker color than it was initially.

Moved in and already looking well used.