Grateful for my cushy desk job.

Earlier this summer, Joel and I had been contemplating, looking, drooling, discussing, assessing trade offs and compromising on our thoughts and making efforts to look for a new house and/or property for over two years.  We were just not getting anywhere.

 

One day, I asked Joel:  "Are you really that unhappy where we are?"

 

He thought about it for a second and said, "You know, at first I was.  I was ready to be out with more land and more space and less close neighbors but now I've gotten used to this and I think I'm spoiled by being in town and close to everything." (.... or something like that.... I could be taking a few liberties and probably shouldn't be using quotes...but, whatever....)

 

And I said, in a house like we have now, we could have it paid off before Lily's in middle school.  Think about that.  No house payment by the time we're 45 (or earlier, really)?  There's something to be said for that.

 

Now will we really stay here FOREVER? I don't know.  But we are going to stay for a while and so then Joel said, let's do some upgrades!

 

So we decided to start with the kitchen.  Unfortunately, I don't have a very good before shot but below is the best I've got and it's from when we started the first project - added cabinet pulls.  So excuse the mess....Joel will probably faint at the thought of me putting these pictures on the Internet.  The house is never that messy cause he's a neat freak.

Anyhow, between these various pictures, you can see all the aspects of the kitchen as it was before.

 

Greenish Formica counter tops. 

 

 

White appliances.  Gas Range.

 

No real back splash. Except the green Formica one.

 

Goofy (albeit extremely handsome) husband.

I've had a dream of running a gas line to the kitchen so I could have a gas range since the day I bought this house 7.5 years ago.  Earlier this fall, that goofy, handsome husband of mine made it happen.  Have I ever mentioned how talented and handy he is?

After some debate, one Craigslist bust and one successful Craigslist purchase, we had a plan on the appliances.  We went with stainless steel!  We purchased the fridge used from Craigslist.

**** Insert Interesting Side Story Here****

Joel went to pick up the fridge from the seller who lived somewhere in Brown County.  He gets to the fella's house and walks in to the garage and sees one of his old Mustangs!  He says to the guy, "Hey, that's my old car!" 

Guy says, "Oh, you used to have a car like this?"

Joel:  "No, I used to have THAT car!" 

Crazy small world, eh?

********

After some searching and price comparing, we bought the range, a new dishwasher and hood from Lowes.  And let me say, we actually just replaced our dishwasher earlier in the summer but had bought a white one.  Now we needed stainless steel.  Doh.

However, thank you Craigslist, we were able to sell our old stove/hood and not so old dishwasher so that did help offset the cost of new stuff.

We also bought new quartz counter tops and those were installed about 3 weeks ago.  It was really starting to come together!  The final piece was the back splash.....which we wanted to tile....ourselves.

And that brings me to the subject line of this post.  Even now, I feel too tired to go in to all the gory details, trials and tribulations of getting the project done. 

We worked our tails off over Thanksgiving week.  Long days, aching backs, sore hands.  But we did get it done.  And it looks amazing.

Except outlet covers aren't done. But after the outlet covers, THEN we're done.