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]