Almost done!

Well again, time is flying by.  Here’s how we’ve been spending our time…

Before:

Here’s what the kitchen used to look like…

We are now working with this…

After:

MUCH better now.

This past weekend we completed the backsplash.  My mom was here and we did it together.  Jeff didn’t lift a finger- practically!  He was on kid duty which was work enough but for once he didn’t lead the charge and I am now a skilled tile-er, thanks to my mom!

We made 4 trips to Home Depot and clocked some very long days.  We found some uniquely creative ways of overcoming annoying issues.  In the end, we’re feeling like renovation experts- not!

The kitchen is brighter, seems bigger and cleaner.  It’s a great transformation and in the end it was the least expensive option and made the biggest bang for our buck.  Here’s some more pictures of our process and … fun?

Here I go… starting the laying of the tile. I was enjoying myself in this shot but notice how many tiles are actually laid.

Tiles all laid and starting to set… they’re looking pretty straight!

This is the marriage divorce piece around the outlet… in the end we got creative, to save our marriage and our sanity! Cutting tiles is challenging when the saw is broken and it’s 10pm! In all fairness, Jeff is a good little “tile chipper”.

Filling grout in “looks” easy enough…it’s not!

I love grout! Here I’m having a love-hate with the “bright white” grout.

I’m painting the hood range with stainless steel paint… no more pink-gold hood range!

Last steps are to seal the grout, do a seal between the tiles and the countertop and put the rest of my hardware on the cabinets ( when it arrives).  So we are so close to being done and we are feeling really good about it.  It’s a whole new space and we really are happy with all the time and money we’ve put into it.

Overall, we figured we spent about $1200 including light fixture, paint, countertop, tiles  hardware, sink, faucet, and minor plumping and electrical work .  The biggest expense was the countertop but I am so glad we did it anyways.

So now that we’re almost done this project… we’re going to take a break, I think and start enjoying the spring weather and get ready for camping season.