Alleluia, blessed day...or whatever other praising word you can think of

We finally took on the task of redoing our kitchen...in case you didn't remember, our kitchen was umm . . .just bad. Of course we thought it would take a day to get most of it done (we prepped the whole week beforehand), but as home repairs usually go, we ran into some snags along the way. Snags like, the new counter tops not being the same width as the old ones, the sink not fitting against the counter, the old plumbing crumbling apart, and lots of fun leaks. But it's now done! So, here we go on a pic by pic step of our process.

The first step was getting out this built in bookshelf/pantry thing. I really want to emphasize 'thing' here cause really, what was it!?! I'm still sitting here wondering who in their right mind would have stuck it in. Luckily, it came out easy, just needed some pushing, which I was happy to render.

Here's the pic without the pantry. It really did wonders to not have it there.

Yep, here would be a close up of the kitchen. Excuse the fact I was cooking dinner at the time.

You really didn't get it wrong, this was all the counter space we had. Are you noticing the exposed wood? There was also a 12 by 12 inch patch of the laminate that simply lifted off. Lovely.

Here are the new counter tops! We were also able to extend them two feet, which really doubled our counter space. Ok, not quite doubled, but it certainly helped. Taking the sink off the angle also really helped open up some counter space.

Putting in a new back splash! I was very surprised how fun this was.

Then we added some paint...Andrew was quite thrilled he only had to cut the top corner of the wall. And quite frankly, I don't blame him. We are really all painted out over here. You'll notice that Andrew is under the sink. I have to give him major props for spending hmmm, probably a few good long hours under there.

Here's the final masterpiece! After we were all done, we were sitting on the couch just staring at the kitchen...yes it still has some quirks, but we concluded that at least now its got some redeeming qualities. And I'm pretty sure I could go give that dishwasher a kiss right now.