Project: Kitchen

A big reason I fell in love with this house is the big kitchen! It has tons of cabinets and drawers! There's access to the deck! It has a bar! And the dining room is attached! Okay, so it's not a formal dining room, but it's got hardwood floors!

The kitchen was not very appealing when I first moved in though. The walls had been painted white... over red. And you can tell in areas like where the wall meets the chair railing. You could tell it was a cheap, rushed paint job. The cabinets were filthy. And the vinyl floor was disgusting. So the first thing we did was clean everything! And then we found some of those peel and stick tiles to put over the vinyl flooring. I know that may sound cheap to some of you, but any other option was just not in the budget at the time and still isn't today. This is what we chose. It was affordable and both quick and easy to put down. Instant upgrade!

My plan from the get go was to get all of the cabinets and trim painted a bright white because they still seem a little dingy to me. For the walls I wanted to find a really nice blue/gray color. And I found it! I picked out Mercer Blue in the Eddie Bauer collection for Valspar. We also picked out a glass tile backsplash with white, blue, gray, and charcoal. You may be thinking those colors sound so boring, but I love all colors. So I don't want to paint my kitchen green and always be tied to that color. With a neutral background, I can still use all different colors!

I found this rug and I love it! My sister paid for half as my wedding gift and I paid the rest. It looks sooooooo good! And I got these pictures for Christmas since I didn't get them off my registry.

Now for the pictures!

We still have to cut a few tiles for the odd areas, grout the tiles, and buy all new plates and put them up. I also have plans for a plate wall over the mirrored console table, and I need to get some decor items for that. We just got the table last weekend at Tuesday Morning. If you don't go to that store, you should, because it is great! I have been thinking about that table for months and I figured it would be gone, but they still had it! It was meant for me!

We haven't painted the cabinets and trim, so that's still in the plans. And I will definitely be changing out those gold hinges and knobs! I'm not sure what we're going to do behind the stove area yet, but we've been thinking about mounting a microwave over it. Right now the ginormous outdated microwave sits in a little alcove next to the refrigerator, but I'd rather utilize that as a cookbook shelf. So we'll see. It's still a lot of white in there. Maybe we can change the counter at some point to help break up all that white.

And excuse all the stuff on the counters. I just went grocery shopping today and I've been buying a lot online lately. See that Foodsaver in the next to last picture? Best deal ever!