Kitchen Remodel!

Well more like a mini remodel. One room that gets a lot of use is our kitchen. Diana spends hours cooking delicious food and has an arsenal of cooking appliances, tools, and gadgets. I spend hours eating the food and keeping the kitchen operational. So it was about time to get rid of our cheapo counter tops and upgrade to granite.

When we moved into the house, the kitchen was functional but pretty basic. We started right away with paint on the walls and adding a tile floor. Don't let the picture fool you... that is not a wood floor, it is a squishy foam-like linoleum style floor. Yuck.  

Original kitchen when we moved into the house

Kitchen counter in use

The project started out by removing the blah tile back splash. This was straight forward with no problems.

Back splash removed

The next step was to patch some holes and fill gaps left from removing the old tile. Again, straight forward and no problems. Then, out came the sink. We were able to wait until the night before the new counter installation to remove the sink and counter to limit the disturbance to using the kitchen.

Sink Removed

Once the sink was out, the counter came out with a couple tugs. We were now ready for the new counters.

Counter Top Removed

The counter top guys arrived first thing at 7 AM and were done by 9 so I was just a little late for work. It went in smoothly and it looked great!

New Counter and Sink!

I installed the new faucet and reattached all of the plumbing. Fortunately, everything lined up with the adjustable plumbing and we were ready to start using the sink. And I learned all the tricks to reinstalling a garbage disposal. It is an interesting and clever set up.

New faucet installed and plumbing hooked up!

A couple weekends later I had time to attack the back splash. Laying out and cutting all of the little mosaic tiles takes a lot more time than actually putting it on the wall. But, having tiled the kitchen floor and the basement bathroom floor, I have learned that getting the layout right is critical. This paid off again, and the tile went up (and fit) with no problems.

Laying out the back splash

Back splash on the wall!

We added the grout, touched up some trim, and were ready to enjoy using the new counter. This might bring the list of house improvements to an end... or at least a lot shorter and less expensive.

New counter complete and in use!