Our Kitchen!

You have heard a lot about it, and finally here are some photos of our practically brand new kitchen!  Tackling this two month project at this point in our lives was not on our agenda, but looking back now, it seems there was a divine plan at work beyond what we could see or imagine and we love how it turned out! 

We upgraded our countertops to a granite stone called Black Pearl and bumped out our countertop on the peninsula so that (eventually) we can get some counter-height chairs and people can just pull up a chair to the counter.  It is the main gathering place in our house, so we figured people might as well be comfortable while hanging out with us!  Plus we figured that with that large of a flat surface, we would get a TON of use out of that space with projects and homework and cooking etc. 

Glad I captured the crock pot action for Lily's family birthday party for you!  But the honest truth is that our kitchen is never this sparkly clean unless we are hosting some kind of gathering, so I figured I should snap some photos while I could- and while the birthday girl was napping! 

We changed painted our cabinets Simply White by Benjamin Moore and changed out all of the hardware and hinges.  

We kept our same sink that we had before.  It is pretty non-traditional to have a "top mount" sink with granite countertops, but we are super glad we stuck to our guns.  We upgraded our sink last spring and really love it, so getting rid of it was not really something we were wanting do do despite all of the advice and encouragement from our contractors.  We love this sink and are really happy with the charm it adds to our kitchen.

Thanks to all of the water damage, we got brand new hardwood floors in our kitchen.  We deepened to stain color and really like the depth it adds to the room.  I admit, it shows a little bit more dirt and advertises when I do not sweep, but we are SO glad we changed the stain color.  We also sanded down and stained our front hall to match this color which ties the spaces together nicely.  This is also a pretty good glimpse of the spindle(s) we added with the counter bump out.  

As part of the recovery process, our insurance included a fresh coat of paint for our walls in both our laundry room and the kitchen.  We could not believe our good fortune, so we decided to lighten up our kitchen paint color.  We decided to go with Repose by (I think) Benjamin Moore. It is shocking how much changing this paint color along with the cabinet color has done to change the entire feel of the room.  Everything feels so much brighter, happier and just more like "us."  We kept our laundry room the same color (Tiffany Blue) but we were also given new flooring for that room due to water damage, so we got a black and white checkerboard pattern.  It looks super cute and pretty much completed my "dream" for that room.  I don't have a photo of it, but it looks cute and cheerful.

We were also allotted an allowance for carpet replacement for our family room thanks to water damage.  I do not have any pics of it for this post, but we picked an oatmeal based color that looks great with the dark flooring.  It is amazing how soft and fluffy new carpet feels under your feet.  It makes me want to re-carpet our entire upstairs as I now appreciate how much we need new carpet now that I have something to compare it to! Wow!

I do not have a photo of our new dishwasher, but we are excited about that as well! There are still several smaller kitchen projects we would eventually like to tackle...things like lighting, back splash, curtains...but for now, we are super happy with where we are.  

It was a lot of fun getting to pull all of this together.  Crazy, sometimes stressful but also a lot of fun and a great distractor for us while we were waiting to be matched with a baby.  It is shocking how many choices there are along this path- floor stains, carpet swatches, types, loops, paint colors, shades of white, hinges- on and on.  You just pick what you like and hope it all works well together.  It helped that I love this kind of thing and had an idea of what I would love and so it was just a matter of  getting Joe's approval and then casting the vision for our contractors.  We are thrilled with how it turned out and absolutely view it as evidence of God's blessing over our lives. 

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