The Story of Us: Our New Kitchen

Our kitchen has been taking up a lot of Jared's time this winter. It's been a process that started in November and took until February. Jared worked on it as much as he could in his spare time, which is not much time. I would say there were probably at least 100 trips to various hardware stores. It was a long process, but totally worth it.
Before:

Jared and I tiled the floor before we moved in. Then a month later, after moving in, the major project started with the painting of the cabinets. The cabinets are good quality, newish, and not in terrible condition, but we didn't like the color; they didn't suit the house at all. Jared also added a lot of extra wood trim to make the cabinets look more finished.

The island is one of my favorite parts. It was a curved kind of shape with black, marble tile counter tops and nasty grout. We rearranged the shape of the cabinets to a rectangle and added a new oak butcher block counter, which I LOVE. It's so warm, natural, smooth and has beautiful colors and imperfections. It's big enough we can all sit at it together.

Close up. Beautiful, yes?

After the cabinets were done we had granite counter tops installed. It's a small space, so it wasn't too expensive. It's light with grey and greenish undertones. We also got a new kinda-farmhouse sink, faucet, with built in soap and button for the garbage disposal, which I've always wanted.

After the counter tops the backsplash needed to be done, because ripping out the old one left massive holes in the wall. We wanted to do subway tile because we have it in the bathroom attached to the kitchen, and because it's pretty and period appropriate for the house. We added a strip of modern glass and stone mosaic and used grey grout to make the tiles pop.

There are sparkles in it. It really shines in the light.

Jared tiled in this little window and continued the tile all the way up the wall, which looks great.

After that Jared moved onto the crown molding. This turned out to be more difficult than anticipated, and Jared burned through quite a bit of molding trying to make it work. It was totally worth it, it fits the house so much better.

Over all, the kitchen has great light. There is an enormous window through which I can gaze out at the kids and chickens in the backyard and the view of the incredible mountains above Springville. There are two windows in the pantry and one in the bathroom that brighten up the whole kitchen. Jared also put in LED under cabinet lighting. In the evening the light is not great, but maybe we can add some can lighting down the road when we rip up the bathroom floor above.

I also love our back door, which is original to the house, although Jared doesn't love it so much. It's old and distressed and even has the old, wobbly looking glass. I even think the crack in one pane looks cool.