I told you I would post!

I guess it's time for me to explain why you haven't heard from us in awhile. Well, we have been swimming in pretty big home improvement project. We decided to tackle the kitchen. As you can see in this before picture the kitchen wasn't that bad...unless you were standing in it. Pictures do not show the mint green and taupe linoleum, the faded maple (also known as goldy orange) cabinets and the bright apple/lime/mint green walls. We really couldn't tell you the exact color, because it was mix of them all.


The whole project began with Kevin removing all the cabinet doors. My job was to keep them in order and then I was going to paint them. I didn't do this the Ross way (which was stripping the old finish and then spraying them with paint). I did it the less time consuming non-perfectionist way. I found a primer that stuck to stained wood and put on a coat of that, both sides of course. Then I painted them with a medium brown, two coats, both sides. Then I glazed with a deep brown, front side only. The whole process took me about 1 1/2 weeks to complete. I would work on it on the weekends whenever I had a free moment and when I got home from work. I will NEVER repaint cabinets again, although, I am pleased with the result. (In the post regarding the storm this is the project I was doing. I had all the cabinet doors, 35 in all, on the floor of the garage. While the sirens were going off I was running in and out of the house trying to keep them in order and trying to beat the hail.)

Next we tackled the floor. OHMYWORD! We had linoleum...that was still VERY attached to the concrete. So Kevin started scrapping. We totally did this the hard way. Here are Kevin's hands halfway through day two of scrapping. I helped on in this stage as well, I even got a blister to prove it.

Once the linoleum was up it was time to lay the tile. We found some inexpensive tile and were very excited about how well it was fitting in to our color scheme. Aaron Swanson came over to help Kevin start this phase of the project. They laid the second row of tiles and realized that some of the tile were not exactly the same size. Some were about 1/4" smaller. We bought the tile at a discount store...and now we know why they were discounted. So, they did their best to arrange the tile with as much uniformity as possible. (side note: if you are ever at our house please only glance at the floor, do not spend time focusing on the tile :) ) The tile laying and grouting took quite a while. I think it may have taken two weeks to complete. We chose one color of grout and then we didn't like it so we used one that we had used in the laundry room. Well, we ran out and had to hunt down the right brand, then we bought the wrong kind (non-sanded), but we made do. No one will ever be able to tell the difference, you can look for the difference if you want to...bet you can't find it!

Then all we had to do was paint the walls. I like the idea of a green kitchen, but the old green was just too much to handle, so I chose a very pale minty sage green. It is very subtle, but goes so nicely against the milk chocolate brown cabinets and the tile.


After all was said and done it dawned on me that I hadn't changed the look of the kitchen much. I was a little dissappointed that there was a drastic change, but I am very happy with the result. Our kitchen just needed a little bit of an updated look.

Today we are having someone come and bring some carpet samples because we are recarpeting the whole house! We are very excited about this. After the carpet is done we only have the master bathroom and the baby's room to redo, we're almost done!!!

Oh, by the way, Kevin leaves on Monday for 4 days...be checking for the next exciting episode of "When Kevin is Gone"