Pepto Ain't Got Nothing On This Kitchen

Let me begin by saying the house was built in 1999, not 1989 like you will probably think when you see the pictures of my kitchen below. The previous owners purchased the house during construction meaning they intentionally chose every detail in every room of the home. Let's just be nice and say we have *cough, cough* "different" taste. I guess part of me still thinks 1999 was like 2 years ago though, not 16, so I do get that styles change. I'd like to say in my defense I had been living in an apartment with two other people and my Mother's spare bedroom before that, so the space factor alone was what sold me here. I mean that's a good amount of space for a kitchen, and the counter space...fuhgettaboutit! I was dreaming of baking and chopping and mixing and learning how to do all of those things since I'm not a baker or a cook. Anyway, to make a long story short I saw potential! In the MANY blogs of I've read about house renovations you get to follow the journey of redoing a room and it seems like forever until you see that beloved "Before and After" shot but alas I'm going to do things a little backwards and give you the goods and then I'll do detailed entries later.

So, without further ado here are my "before" pictures (taken from the realtors website). Try to soak it all in folks, there's a lot going on here:

1. PINK Corian countertops. This aren't "bad pics" or taken with "bad lighting", Nope those puppies are pink!
2. Salmon colored ceramic tile with grout you can't truly appreciate until you are up close. It was dirty and cracked and made me want to take a shower...with bleach.
3. As if pink counters and salmon colored flooring wasn't bad enough they also threw in pinky-beige cabinets to boot. I guess I can appreciate that they had a theme and damn it they were going to stick with it!
4. From afar the backsplash appeared to be ivory (even we believed it was ivory). However, after we painted the cabinets and redid the counter tops it became pretty apparent pretty quickly that it was MAUVE. *Sidenote saying that color makes me feel like its 1972...just saying.
5. Original appliances which I refused to use. It was my first thing to replace in the kitchen. I just cant                                                              

And... here's my kitchen today!

Pretty great transformation right?! We did ALL of the work ourselves (on a very tight budget) with exception to the floor and the recessed lighting. I'm so happy with the way it turned out! 

In true D.I.Yife fashion there are a couple more projects in here I'd like to tackle (like under cabinet lighting, maybe some pendant lights over the bar counter and a built in bench seat with storage in the breakfast nook area to name a few). Of course I will let you know all about them when the time comes. 

P.S. That's NOT real granite its PAINTED by yours truly. Details coming up!