Kitchen Makeover

Or should I say, almost makeover.

We’ve just crossed another one of the major house goals off the list, and it feels good. Really good.

Of course our giant purchase came right before everything hit the fan with Foster, but still, I can’t say that I regret it- I’ve been dreaming of this since we bought the house.

What is this giant purchase? Well you might have guessed it by now- new countertops. New granite countertops.

Before you can appreciate the now, though, let’s look at part of the original kitchen.

Admittedly only part of the kitchen, but still, you get the idea

We took down the wallpaper below the chair rail, ditched the hanging light, painted the walls a neutral green (Garden Shed from the Martha Stewart collection at HD), and added hardwood floors. Then got new appliances, added new hardware to the cabinets, and landed here:

The worst part about these plastic white countertops isn’t how chincy they seem, or how dated they look- no, it’s how easily they stain. And as evidences by the glass in the picture, we like our red wine in the house on a hill. You know what doesn’t pair well with a glass of red wine? White, easily stained countertops. And let’s not even get started on how disgusting the old white ceramic sink looked. No amount of bleaching could help that, and I was too embarrassed to picture it here.

The husband checks our slab for straightness

So we found a reputable local source for granite and picked out our slab. The company came out and traced our current configuration, creating a template that they would then use to cut our granite. It’s still amazing to me that all those pieces came out of the slab pictured- it’s a puzzle to use every little piece and avoid seams everywhere.

After tearing out the old countertops

A week later, our new countertops were ready, and were installed in just a couple short hours. We installed a new faucet to match our new undermounted stainless (stainless, how bout that for a concept!) steel sink and voila! It feels like a new(er) kitchen.

[click to enlarge]

Now just to paint the cabinets!

15 thoughts on “Kitchen Makeover”

The countertops look great!!! Good luck painting the cabinets. Never again! haha. In my defense, mine were disgusting (we bought a foreclosure) so the cleaning step took forever. We just bought cheap countertops until we completely redo the kitchen. We need all new things though, so it’ll be a little while yet.

Looks so much better! I’ve had the white counter tops like you, and they are SO hard to keep looking nice. Tile didn’t fare much better in my old house. For me now, it’s granite or concrete all the way.

wow that really does make a huge difference – they look great!!

Looks great. Isn’t it nice when things work out like you plan?? And so rare!

They look so nice. That white crap is miserable. We have some sort of terrible tan laminate that also sucks up everything and turns it into a stain. But we rent so we cannot replace it. Love the sink too!

Looks great!! I’m debating putting in granite, but it might look very out of place in my tiny house.

I’m watching HGTV right now and it was like the TV transposed to my iPad! Hahahaha!!! Love the new counters and sink and can’t wait to see what color you choose for the cabinets 🙂

Jealouuuuuus!! 😍

Wow what a huge visual difference! What a lovely and functional improvement.

Wooohoo! Looking good 😀 😀 😀

Yay! Looking great! Good luck painting the cabinets – that sucked. I suggest you follow the tutorials where they say to use an enamel based paint (Sherwin Williams has an awesome door and trim paint that would be great) and use a paint sprayer. I didn’t do either one of those things and it wasn’t great – but then, I was just doing my utility room.