Kitchen Remodel

I know, I know, we live in a brand new home, but somehow we found ourselves doing a kitchen re-do over the last few weeks.
Here is our perfectly beautiful, new and lovely kitchen.  (These are the before pictures.)

One problem: the center island has always been an unuseable space. The tile/travertine is pourous and ridiciuosly impractical. It is a invite for germs and the highbar isn't big enough for a plate and no one can do homework on it since it is so uneven.

 

After considering all of our options, we decided to do it all so it looked complete and left no regrets.

We wrapped the island with wanes coating, put in granite (yikes!), which meant a new sink and faucet, did a full tile backsplash, painted and hardwired lighting to the top and bottom of the countertops. Fancy, huh? Still looking for a good deal on criagslist for some black bar stools. We love it and boy do I feel spoiled!

For once we hired someone to do the work.  If we could or knew how to do granite ourselves, we would have.  I have to admit though that it was nice (for once) to pay someone to come in and do the work and be gone in a day.  That being said, we still did the demolition of the old sink and countertops.  Demolition of the center island.

 

Yes the kids really did help me paint and yes it did take me longer with their help and yes, they loved it and YES that is CHOCOLATE BROWN!!!

I was the one that really really wanted the wanescoating.  Charlie politely obliged.  He is an amazing craftsman.  I am one lucky girl to have him.

Tearing out the backspash so we could tear out the countertops...

We had to remove the counters/sink on a Saturday because the granite install was scheduled for Monday morning.  It was hard to be without a sink for a few days, but oh, so worth it!

A sneak peak of the tile backsplash pattern.  We couldn't find anything we loved at Lowes or Home Depot so we custom ordered from a "real" tile store.

Now I am really teasing you.  Here you can see part of the granite after it was installed.  Of course the microwave/hood has been down for several days so we could install the tile.

Now you just have to wait....because the job isn't complete quite yet.  We have the tile to finish up (grout).  But oh, did Charlie do a good job with it.  The AFTER pictures will come in a few days.

It has been more than a few days, but here is the after...drum roll.....

This is not the greatest image of the sink, but I have to tell you, what I love about the sink is that it slopes toward the drain so all of water easily flows out.  Seems like a silly thing, I know, but my last sink didn't have that and I really like it.

Oh look, you even get to see our fish that we have had since Lexi was born - she just turned 4!!  Crazy that these goldfish have lasted that long!