Home Improvement: Kitchen

The kitchen was one of the only rooms in our house that needed a complete over hall. It was a mess full of yellow and burgandy colored tiles, horrible wood cabinets,an old chambers stove, detachable dish washer, the list can go on and on.

The stove I actually loved, but it didn’t have a lot space inside and would have made it difficult for cooking so it had to go along with pretty much everything else.

Here are a couple of the before shots of the space:

We closed on our house Memorial Day 2007 and didn’t move into January 2008 when this kitchen was in workable condition. Removing that tile was torture. It was cemented into the walls, which meant a lot of the walls came with it.

The kitchen eventually started coming together and the cabinets got hung, (I would have preferred to the ceiling, but hubby disagreed and marriage is a compromise...blah blah blah), the new appliances arrived and I got my farm sink!

I wanted a beautiful glass tile backsplash of course, but  with Ann Sacks taste and a Home Depot budget that wasn’t going to happen right away.

Now enter 2009 and the kitchen still had no backsplash, I wanted to repaint the walls to a white/beige and paint the floors! I begged, begged and begged some more and finally with my birthday coming up my hubby gave in!

The tile of my dreams was still out of the question, but I was able to find Subway tile for 24 cents a piece at Home Depot so this little weekend project come up to around $150 for the adhesive, tiles, spacers and grout.

Here is what the kitchen looked like before we added the grout. I would have loved to have used dark grout, but Jon felt better about doing it white. It didn’t matter that much to me so we went with white:

Jon’s not happy that this project took a bit longer than expected. He/we were working on it Saturday afternoon, all of Sunday, and Monday evening. Plus he wasn’t too happy that I was snapping pictures of his crazy hair. Ha ha.

Here it is finished product with the white grout. I spent the majority of the day yesterday putting the kitchen back together and whipping up some snacks because my hubby thought it would fun to invite guests over when most of my kitchen supplies were residing in the dining room. Ah fun times.

Here is the corner where the old stove and dishwasher resided. We moved the dishwasher to next to the sink and added more cabinets and counterspace.

Close up of the tile:

So we are now almost finished (famous last words). Next step is to paint the walls a lighter shade in the white/beige family and then take the green that is now on the walls and paint the floors that color.

Here are my offensive wood floors:

Bear got a little angry when he was in his puppy stage and started to kibble and scratch at the floor.

So of course I now need to ask for advice. What color do you recommend I paint my walls? I love color so I haven’t really worked with a lot of  light shades in the past. I need help!