Kitchen Renovations

So here's the story about the kitchen renovation.

When we bought the house, we planned at some point in the future to update the kitchen: replace the cabinets, get a dishwasher, and do something with the countertops.

Last week Scott got a great deal on a dishwasher while browsing Craig's List. We picked up a dishwasher for $75. Installing the dishwasher would mean taking out one of the base cabinets already in place.

Taking out one of the base cabinets would have meant large gaps, as the cabinet base was significantly larger than the dishwasher. So! We decided to replace all of the base cabinets and install the dishwasher.

This is where the sink used to be:

Notice the plastic "copper" tiles that were on the walls. Yeah, we knew that those would be going one day.

So the cabinets got put in, and the dishwasher was hooked up. Only to find that the dishwasher didn't actually work. Scott called the guy we bought it from, and he said that he'd give us our money back. The next step was to purchase a new dishwasher. That one looks GREAT. And we still can't bring ourselves to remove the lovely protective film from our shiny new dishwasher.

So the next step would be to put the sink back in, hook up the plumbing, and get back to normal. Well, that only works if your plumbing holds together after 50+ years. And if your garbage disposal didn't disintegrate.

Next trip to Lowe's: new sink, new plumbing, new garbage disposal.

As Scott is preparing to put everything back together, he thinks to himself, "self, why would I put this sink back in, only to pull it out when we replace the countertop later on? Why not just take care of the countertop right now?"

Next trip to Lowe's: new tile that we had looked at a few weeks ago. We decided to go with a ceramic tile countertop since (a) we didn't like any of the in-stock countertops at Lowe's, and (b) Scott is actually an expert tiler.

Not only does Scott do the countertop, but he does the back splash as well:

And because those tacky plastic copper tiles clashed with the new countertop tiles, Scott picked up some paint while he was at Lowe's and painted the entire kitchen. The kitchen looks fabulous.

I'm happy to report that the dishwasher is running right now. More pictures to come in the next post.