The New House Tour -The kitchen

After dragging you through ever excruciating detail of selling our old house it just occurred to me that I haven't posted anything to do with our new house. Thats hardly fair right? Well I am sure you have seen the pictures on facebook but since its out with the old and in with the blog, I figure they should be posted here too.
I only have about a gazillion pictures, a lot of them from my phone so not the best quality but perfectly fine for the purpose of documentation. One thing I learned from being a homeowner with the old house, I LOVE before and after pictures. Its so fun to see how far things have come. But today we'll start with the kitchen, the heart of the home so it seems appropriate. Its not completely done (is it ever?) But its finished enough that it has become a lower priority on the list.

This is what we saw when we came to look at the house. Its impossible to tell from pictures but the kitchen was disgusting. I'm quite certain the base boards and cabinets had never been wiped down and maybe not the stove either. The grout on the tile counter tops made me shutter.

Take notice of the door here, you'll be quizzed on it later!

Luckily, dirt cleans up. Sometimes, it requires more elbow grease than we initially thought, and OK I ended up painting the counter top grout because it was so stained and I couldn't look at it anymore, but it cleaned up.
We also had the kitchen painted a lighter shade of green, I was going for pistachio but ended up with mint. At least it was fresh and I can change it at a later date, Im sure pistachio or not, it would eventually get changed again anyway.

What do you think of the black doors? I love them.

I tried to live with it, I really did. I cleaned and cleaned. I added beadboard wallpaper to the cabinet ends for a little something extra, I got new knobs and pulls, and we got a really pretty new faucet.
But after months of complaining about the tile counter tops calmly mentioning how I felt that grout on counter tops was a bacteria breeding ground and getting a surprisingly reasonable estimate on granite, I had Hubbs on board new counter tops (a new sink, and another new faucet) and I took advantage!

In the meantime, I took it upon myself to get rid of the nasty old fluorescent above the sink and add a pretty pendant. Oh the surprises he gets while he's at work

Bye bye tile!

One of the favorite things I did was have them level the bar out behind the cook top. It used to be elevated to bar height but I asked them to make it all counter height. I felt like with the vent hood hanging down and the bar rising up, it was just closing everything in. The results made it look much bigger. 

Hello shiny black granite! I also had Sherwin Williams match a cabinet door so I could touch up all the cabinets and paint the beadboard wallpaper. Last I trimmed out the cabinet ends to look a little fancier. 

Look close and you can see the wallpaper Im talking about here.

Off to the left, the black door again...

Well the picture is too bright to see my replacement light above the sink, but its there. 

So here is a little before and after recap for ya!

You can really see what I am talking about with the bar/cook top in the photo.

Since the counter tops were finished we've done away with the eat in kitchen area and put in a large hutch to absorb some storage from the laundry room (I knocked out some cabinets to make a "mudroom" - that's another post.)  I'm also on the hunt for some cute bar stools so the kids can be there to "help" while Im cooking supper. Eventually, the floor tiles will be replaced along with the cabinet doors and vent hood, a more neutral paint color will go up, and the rest of the lighting will be updated, but for now I'm still in awe when I walk in and see my granite so the kitchen gets bumped to the bottom of the list. Just wait until the master bathroom post.

Pop quiz...what did you think of the black door? I did all of them in the house, Ill have to see if I can rustle up some before and after shots but I really like the difference it makes.