yessss....finally we have the ability to fix the kitchen! for those of you who have seen the house in person, you know that the kitchen was one of the worst parts of the house. the previous owner decided it would be a good idea to make the countertops "granite" like. to do this, they put vinyl or linoleam floor squares ON THE COUNTERTOP. wtf right? yeah that's what we thought too. it looked horrendous, got food stuck in the crevices, was peeling and cracking and was just down right disgusting. here is what it looks like...and by the way, the pictures make it look WAY better than it really was....
first step was to clean. the cupboards were dirty, they weren't put in the correct spots, they weren't on the tracks. the floor had some type of tape goo on it, there were crumbs adhered to the sink, there was food splashes all over the blinds. yuck yuck yuck.
next we picked out countertops. we debated and debated about whether we wanted to save the money for granite or find a nice laminate. my brother (having worked at a custom laminate shop before) always told me i should look at laminate as there were some really nice ones out there these days. needless to say, being the older sister that i am, i never listened. until we went to lowe's and got some prices and actually looked at stuff. the countertop lady at lowes gave us some pretty good advice. she told us if we love our cupboards, to save for granite. if we don't and maybe someday would like to replace them, go with laminate. so we looked at some laminates and lo and behold...my brother was right! there ARE some really good ones out there these days! next we had to decide whether we could install them ourselves. again my brother ensured us we could do it, (or he could at least) and again i didn't know if i really believed him. then the lady at lowe's said we could as well....and she told us the prices of installation, more than $200 MORE than the actual countertops would cost. come on! so...we decided to ask a friend of my brother (who's parents own the custom laminate shop he worked at) what they could do for us. we decided to purchase from them as they would cut a sink hole for us and put together one of the joints. we went with Jamocha Granite a Formica laminate countertop....
this was my first glance of the finished product. i went to go pick it up one day on my lunch break, and driving it back, i was so nervous is was going to fall out! isn't it pretty???
ok so next step was finding a time the three of us were all home! let me tell you, that was one of the hardest parts!
anyways, when we started to take the old countertops off, we discovered that the old laminate was underneath what the last homeowner had done. with that, there was also laminate on the walls, excuse me?! well we decided to remove it, so i can tile a backsplash (something i've wanted to do ever since starting to watch HGTV!) when we removed it, it left a lot of glue and tore some of the drywall behind it. still have yet to decide what to do with that mess...
ok so after we removed everything, we glued small pieces of the buildup to the actual cupboards. from there, we screwed those to the actual buildup for the countertops. once all that was in place, we dryfit the countertops in and my brother finished the other joint. i wasn't around when he did that, so don't ask me how he did! i know there was glue involved and that's about it. he did a fantastic job! then we needed to sand one part of the countertop so it would fit flat against the wall (the back edge of the island piece). once we did that, we screwed the countertop to the build up that we had screwed to the other build up pieces, that we glued to the cupboards. woofta! as i'm typing this, i feel like i should be writing a lot more since i feel like it took us FOREVER to do it all. and....here it is! doesn't look the greatest yet, but let me tell you...it is SO MUCH BETTER than what we had before. i can actually put FOOD on this countertop! woohoooooo!
ok, so now that we got the countertops figured out, then comes the sink. i convinced andy that it was a good idea to put in a new sink, as the old sink was just atrotcious. i found a granite composite sink at home depot that i just fell in love with! it matches the countertop perfectly and has a nice deep basin for doing dishes (not saying i actually do then). so he agrees to let me by the sink, a new faucet and a new garbage disposer, so naturally, i do that as quickly as i can before he changes his mind! then...my brother discovers that the new sink i purchased, has drain holes that are set back farther than our previous sink, meaning the plumbing won't match up. so instead of returning my new favorite sink, i take on a plumbing project. probably not my smartest idea, but whatever, i'm not parting with the sink....so that leads to my next steps (some of which occured while others were doing the countertops)
step one, install drains
step two, install faucet and sprayer
step three, plumbing...yikes.
after reading about 1,000 blogs, and watching an equal amount of youtube videos, i'm confident in my new plumbing skills. so i go to home depot, i buy a few wrong parts. then i go back and buy a few more. then i go back and i find WALT. walt the home depot guy. he introduces me to this fancy product that will work perfectly! it was like a plumbing system, all made for me! so i buy that, and i get to work. and here is what i end up with! once i had the correct parts and got it all fit and in place, it actually worked out pretty well. and...no leaks! woo! well one leak, but we fixed that.
also, on a side note, my brother and andy also installed shut off compression valves below the sink as there weren't any. that was a touchy process, but in the end i'm glad we did it.
so we got the plumbing, the sink, the faucet, and the drains all installed and here is my success, it works! picture :) don't you just love it!
so now that all that is done there are a few more things to fix, that we're waiting on both time and money for. the first one is staining the cabinets. i want them darker. here is my first attempt, but i think it's too dark. so when i get more time, i'm going to an actual stain store and talking with peeps about my options. i think i want a real dark brown, not black. home depot didn't have that so that's why i tried black first.
after i figure out the cupboards and how i'm going to do that, i'm going to buy the following tile for the backsplash. it is bamboo something or other from home depot (the small skinny tiles) and then a row of the glass/ceramic mosaic tiles will go a few inches up from the laminate backsplash. (the bottom brown in the picture is the countertop sample, i wanted to make sure it matched)
so with those two projects waiting...here is what the kitchen looks like now!
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