Finally, our kitchen renovation is done. But let’s start from the beginning. Here is what our kitchen looked like when we first met it:

Before

Absolutely hideous, right? In retrospect I can’t believe we even bought the house. This awful combination of early nineties wallpaper with all white cabinets, counters, and wooden country touch to it would surely kill any appetite if I had to live in it.

So, step one was to get rid of the wallpaper and paint the walls not white. We chose “Stoney Olive” by Behr to add more contrast, but keeping things muted and calm. With the southern exposure and millions of sunbeams lighting up the kitchen all day long, we were able to go with this rich mid tone. This was actually the first time in our lives we splurged on hiring painters to do the job because between packing, moving, taking care of Milo, and working full time, we just wouldn’t have gotten any sleep. The job was done a little sloppy and we will have to do some touch-ups here and there, but at least it was all done by move-in day and we couldn’t help but feeling welcomed by this fresh new look:

Before After

Much much better already. But soon we discovered that we really couldn’t stand the kitchen sink at all. It was too shallow, so that water splashed everywhere and no matter what you would temporarily place in there, it immediately slid into the drain. In addition to that the white countertops were only cleanable with bleach – exactly the kind of poison I don’t want to spray in my house every day. So, we shopped around for alternatives. We found about 4 countertop companies (never knew that this was an exclusively turkish industry) in the Moneysavers coupon book that we usually throw out right away, and got some quotes. The differences in price were gigantic and only Granix kept all promises offered in the ad: Countertop with free demolition and hauling away of old countertops, free installation, free sink, and free tiles for backsplash up to 30 sqft. We decided to do plumbing and installation of tiles ourselves to save some cash. All together we spent $2900 for the package. The company owner Ahmet was really nice and the crew did a good job installing the countertops. But even more awesome was the job my handy dandy husband did installing the backsplash and attaching all pipes and garbage disposal where they belong. And now, proudly presenting our new and modernized kitchen:

After

Okay, I’m gonna have to upload a better quality picture of this at some point. But you can see how happy and content our baby model is about the final result, right?

What do you think about the result? Would you have done anything differently? Have you done any major before-after project lately? Please share them with us.