Making progress

You know how I was complaining that we didn't have any countertops?  Well, I called the company yesterday to tell them that CP had installed the metal piece and asked them to work their magic because we really need a working kitchen.  Work their magic they did- the company called late yesterday afternoon to tell me that the installers would be arriving this morning.  Happy dance!

Get ready for pictures!!

Here is what the kitchen cabinets looked like before spray painting them.  At this point we had the floors refinished and the new double oven installed.

Here are the top cabinets- same ugly yellow color yet they inexplicably have wood cabinet doors.  You can see the wood side piece on the right side of the picture.  

CP worked hard to spray paint all of the metal a creamy white color.  We also took out the hood and the cabinet on the left in the previous picture (hood wasn't working).

CP then built a soffet between the cabinets so that we could hang our microwave/hood combo.

Yay for a working microwave (he still needs to finish the soffet but we need to get the electrician in the house to install a socket in the soffet to plug the microwave in.  CP tried to do it himself and when we turned on the power we heard a POP!  We then decided to leave it to the professional....

CP was then able to vent the microwave/hood out the side of the house (the black vent).  (Side note: how did my husband get so handy??)  CP did take some of the siding color off (whoops) when trying to remove excess caulk on the sides of the vent but we have to replace that anyway....  The other  HUGE vent is the old and now abandoned kitchen vent which is ugly and nasty.  We will have to get a professional to come in, pull it off, and somehow patch up the hole on the side of the house.

We thought about painting the wood cabinet doors the same color as the creamy white metal doors but decided that the color might look odd because of the two different surfaces.  Then CP and I saw a picture of a baby blue wall with white shelves in a kitchen- that was our inspiration.  We decided that we would tie in the creamy white from the metal parts into the wood cabinets by painting the trim white.  As you can see, the result was awful.  What a waste of time.

Originally I was worried that gray wood cabinet doors and the stainless steel appliances would be too industrial looking, but my dad insisted that they would look good.  As you can see in the picture above (the left cabinet), they look much better than the blue.  I still don't love them, but maybe I will change my mind after the room is complete.  Also notice the lovely laminate countertops.

Here's what the house has looked like the past two days without any countertops.

Here are our new granite countertops just installed today!!

Yay for our new cooktop with five burners!

And yay for our new undermounted sink!

Plumber comes tomorrow to hook up the cooktop, hook up the sink, install the new faucet and install the new garbage disposal.  After that WE WILL HAVE A WORKING KITCHEN!!!!  I can't tell you how excited that makes me.  We won't have to eat out every.single.meal!  We can unpack all of our kitchen boxes and free up some space in the garage!

We still have some things to do in the kitchen including figuring out what we want for the backsplash/how to install a backsplash (mental note: must learn how to tile), what color to paint above the top cabinets, painting the window and the ceiling, putting down contact paper so that the paint doesn't scratch off the metal cabinets, and installing all of the cabinets pulls.  But A WORKING KITCHEN!  Big step.

Oh!  And CP and I finally decided on new plates for our house.  We decided to give our old plates away in CT because we had broken a few and they were really large.  We read somewhere that if you eat off smaller plates/plates that have a smaller surface area, you tend to eat less.  While it's hard to find smaller plates these days (especially ones we liked), we went looking for plates that had a raised rim and our goal is to only put food within the smaller circle.

We ended up finding these at Pier 1....and we mixed it up a bit by buying pieces from two different sets.  We bought the large and small plates pictured below...

Martillo Dinnerware in Creme Brulee 

But because we were not huge fans of the bowls and mugs and wanted to spice it up a bit, we bought bowls and mugs from this collection:

"Sanctuary Dinnerware" from Pier1 

Pattern inside of the bowl.

Mugs!

The sets actually go really well together and I LOVE LOVE LOVE the pattern on the sanctuary bowls and mugs (the plates didn't have the raised rim that we wanted).

Doing the happy dance this Friday afternoon!  Have a great weekend!