Kitchen re-do

We've lived in our house for almost five years now. I have mentioned many times that I absolutely abhorred the wallpaper in the kitchen. But truth be told, there wasn't much in the kitchen that I liked. But the wallpaper was certainly the worst.

We never really did anything with the kitchen because one project seemed like it would snowball in to another with no end.

Before we moved in, the home inspection revealed a slight mold issue with the floor leading to the back door. Well, we were told the owners "replaced" the floor. And they did. They replaced the 4' x 1' strip of floor where the issue was with 12" tiles, and framed it in. Yuck! But what were we going to do? We realized this the day before closing.

So then, the sliding door broke. We couldn't pop it out to adjust or replace the rollers because that would mean busting out the tile, which meant replacing the floor, and since the carpet was horrible in the living room, shouldn't we go ahead and replace it in there and in the dining room as well?

You can see where I'm going with this.

But finally, this past month we've done some great things to our kitchen. Our counter tops (which for my CA friends, are Formica... gross huh? Everybody has Formica, except in the super expensive houses where they have granite.) were painted and sealed, forever removing the mauvey-gray grossness. The cabinets, which were previously a "pickled maple" (I just called them pink!) were painted and then glazed with a brown-sienna color, the entire downstairs was replaced with laminate wood, the wallpaper was removed, and the walls painted, and a plaster backslash was added.

I just love it!

Here are some before and after pictures. These before pictures were actually the pictures we took of the kitchen before we bought the house, oh so long ago. Sadly, it was still the way the kitchen looked (with our furniture of course) up until a few weeks ago when the renovations began.