The Kitchen Finale

Finally, the house is coming back together! Not just the kitchen, but everything else as well. I probably will only cover the kitchen in this post, so look for another update soon on the rest of the house. Unfortunately, the following pictures don't show a beautifully, well-put-together kitchen or house, but they do show the progress and current state of things.

The granite kitchen counter top was

installed a few weeks ago.

The countertop, which Jason made the final choice on, is a mixture of dark grays/black, deep deep purple, some clearish color, and even a few flecks of browns/yellows/orange here and there.

Some of the more muted colors. It goes really well with our dark, almost black, cabinets.

This curtain was on clearance a long time ago and I got it thinking that maybe it would be a good match/look for the kitchen. I am still on the fence about it. It is a very big print, with rich, deep colors. If I used this, I would be making a short valance for the top of the window, and a half-window curtain. What do you all think? Should I do it, or is it too much print for the space?

This doesn't show the countertops, but it does show Jason's new, stainless steel microwave! He and our friend, Shaun, installed it one evening. Even though I was opposed to the idea of getting rid of our perfectly good, white microwave, everyone was probably right in that it would've looked weird in the new kitchen. I was able to sell some of my garage sale stuff, including the old microwave, online and help pay for the new one!

Something else I would like to point out about the above photo: this was taken after I had emptied all of the kitchen tubs out of Little Jo's room and put everything in the cupboards. I'm pretty tickled that everything fits into the cupboards with some room to spare! And the only things sitting on top of the cupboard are 3 fancy serving bowls and a big, cast iron dutch oven! That's a huge improvement over the old cupboards!!!!

If you recall, the cupboard over the refrigerator was monster-sized, just like the fridge. The cupboard people didn't recommend putting a shelf, or putting too much of anything, in there since it hung out so far without any stabilizing support. Well, I couldn't stand to have all that wonderful space go to waste, and it wouldn't have allowed me to get everything into the cupboards nicely. So I made a frame to support the front end of the cabinet, and it fits very snugly (ok, I may have had to slightly beat it into place) between the bottom of the cupboard and top of the fridge. I re-used the wooden shelf that came out of our demolished closet to make it, and painted it black. It doesn't match perfectly, but it's pretty darn close!

I also wanted to be able to access, and use, the space between the cupboard and top of the fridge, so I left the kitchen side completely open, and the living room side half-way open. So far, we store our insulated lunch boxes up there, but I'm sure other things will go there as time rolls on. Oh! After putting the support frame in place, I was able to put soooo many things in that cabinet. It can now serve a good purpose like it was supposed to!

The kitchen sink, which was free with the granite countertop, was installed at the same time as the counter. We installed the new Delta faucet ourselves.

The sinks look and feel huge. That is a regular sized cookie sheet in the bigger half - I don't know if that gives you a better idea of the size or not. The extra big size of the sink was almost an issue when Jason started hooking up the plumbing again.

Originally, the garbage disposal was on the left sink and that is where Jason re-installed it. But, he then realized that because of the deeper sink, the drain pipe was lower than the waste pipe going into the wall. Water doesn't still doesn't flow uphill, so he switched it to the right, shallower sink. With some finagaling and lots of wishing for a real plumber dude, he finally got everything hooked back up with water flowing the right direction - into the waste pipe. We have only had one issue and that is where the p-trap comes up and goes into the black waste pipe - it leaks so very minimally, but it still leaks. Jason switched out the washer, but it still leaks, so we're going to put some pipe thread tape on it. If you have any other suggestions for us to try, we are all ears!

Pretty much our final project is to paint this wall. This wall spans both the living room and kitchen, so we wanted to wait until the countertops and cupboards were in before we decided on a color. We think we want to do an accent color here, but what color to do is a mystery.

You've seen the countertop, and this is the fireplace in the living room. What color would you paint that would compliment both kitchen and living room colors? Both of the friends I've asked say purple, but I just painted over all the purple walls! So I'd rather not do purple. I've considered doing the dark gray that is on the fireplace wall (go back a few posts to see it), but I don't want to get too dark. What do you think?

One small thing we've also accomplished was putting up the new curtain rod for the living room window. It is a double rod (I'm putting a double rod in almost every window) so that we can have sheers along with curtains. I never thought I was a big fan of sheers, but upon living in a neighborhood where people driving by can look right into your house if the curtain is open, I began to want them. I didn't like keeping the curtain closed and blocking the natural light, but I also didn't like people seeing into the house. So the sheers became a really strong wish for me.

The one other kitchen upgrade that I don't believe I have mentioned before is the ceiling light. Originally there was a hanging light/chandelier fixture in which only 2 of the bulbs (out of 5 or 6) worked. We replaced the bulbs twice, and both times, all but 2 of the bulbs would burn out almost immediately. Needless to say, the lighting wasn't great, and the fact that Jason sometimes hit his head on the light made it annoying. We installed this track light back before we even started the kitchen project. It's not LED lighting at this time, but it provides more light and looks a lot cleaner and nicer in the small kitchen space. And, no one hits their head on it!

I do believe that concludes our kitchen remodel. There are still a few small things to do, such as finish putting the trim back on the wall in a few places, touch up the paint here and there, but overall, it is basically finished. So far, we both really like it and it is bigger, even though we didn't add any more square feet. I'm curious what other people think. And, if you have any ideas or thoughts on the final wall color, or the kitchen curtains, I would like to hear them!