Happy Anniversary to Us!

I can't believe we've been married for 2 years today - the time flew by! We had a wonderful 2nd year of marriage and I can't wait to see what's in store for the next 20+ years!

The Kitchen: Budget Breakdown

Doing all the labor on our kitchen saved us a ton of money. Like thousands and thousands. I'm extremely grateful that my husband knows his way around power tools so that we didn't put ourselves into debt to re-do the kitchen. We are pretty frugal and obviously shopped around for the best deals we could find, while still getting the items that we wanted and not skimping on quality.

The bottom line dollar for the entire kitchen came to $4,993.33. The budget we set for ourselves before we started was $5,000 so I'm happy we came in under that - by 7 dollars! HA!! Here's an itemized list of the budget breakdown so you can see where that money went:

Flooring & Walls - $768.85 (this includes the tile, grout, thinset, backerboard, tiling tools, baseboards and all trim, spackle, paint, etc.)

Cabinets (stock white cabinets from Home Depot) - $1,551 (we lucked into buying the cabinets during Memorial Day weekend and they were having a 20% sale on all in-stock cabinets. We also opened a HD credit card the same day to get an additional 10%)

Cabinet Hardware, Knobs/Pulls and Screws - $134.54 (we ordered all the knobs off of Ebay for less than a dollar a piece, which was the best price we found anywhere)

Countertops - $1,862 (this includes the templating and installation through Home Depot)

Faucet - $197.00

New over-the-range microwave - $297 (again, we hit up a Memorial Day Sale at Sears for the microwave)

Lighting and Electrical - $249.94 (this includes the new overhead light, the pendant light over the sink (that hasn't been installed or blogged about yet), under cabinet puck lights (again, not installed or blogged yet) and random wiring parts.

Miscellaneous - $360 (this includes the beautiful shelf liner paper I NEEDED and the supplies for the fridge built in, shelving and desk that Jake built (which again hasn't been blogged about!)

So that's how we spent less than $5,000 on a brand new kitchen, from floor to ceiling. It was an extremely gratifying project and it made the months of eating off paper plates with plastic silverware all worth it. We cook SO MUCH more now and I'm baking up a storm as well. It makes me happy to walk into our house and see the kitchen. I told J we're never moving because I'm not ever leaving this kitchen!

The Kitchen: More Photos

New overhead light = no more gross florescent glow! Good shot of the bamboo shade on the window - still trying to decide if I like it. I wanted to bring in some brown and some natural elements, but for some reason, I'm not in love with it.

In love with the new lazy susan corner cabinet (that corner is where the dishwasher used to be)

Amazing pull down faucet and super sleek integrated sink. Quite possibly my favorite part of the kitchen.

Close up of the countertops and knobs. The color is Talus Oyster and it's a solid surface (Corian). It's tan with flecks of white, browns and greys - it reminds me of the inside of an oyster shell. Corian is pretty amazing - very easy to maintain, inexpensive and there is not one seam anywhere on it. L-O-V-E

Right after the counters were installed, before any of our "stuff" was on the counters. The counter space to the right of the stove used to be where our fridge was, so we gained all that extra storage and workspace. Also, I don't know how I lived without an over the range microwave for so long.

Breaking down the budget tomorrow!

The Kitchen: FINISHED!

Yeah, so it's probably pretty obvious that during my 1.5 month hiatus, we finished the kitchen. It's 99% done and I couldn't be more in love with it. I won't bore you with a ton of posts of installing the cabinets, waiting for the counters to be installed and all the last details. That's what July and August consisted of. I think our official end date was August 6th, which was when J installed the faucet and hooked the dishwasher back up. We started May 15th, so I'm pretty proud that less than 3 months later, we have a completely new kitchen.

I'm planning on doing another post with a TON of pics, but I'll leave you with a few sneak peeks. I'll also be doing a complete budget breakdown, as well as a post of the few small little projects we still have to do.

The Kitchen: A Fun Surprise

Let's be honest - my husband is really the one doing this kitchen project. I help when I can, like handing him tools while he's underneath the sink cabinet and doing easy projects, (painting, grouting). But it's him who is leveling the cabinets, drilling the microwave into place, etc.

But I wanted one project for myself and I finally got started on it, now that our cabinets are in place (we're just waiting for HD to come install the countertops at this point). I decided that I really wanted to find some fun shelf liner paper to pop out against the white cabinets. A quick internet research led me to ChicShelfpaper.com. They have HUNDREDS of patterns and I easily found the one that I loved that went perfectly with our semi-beachy kitchen. I ordered it (4 rolls - and I may need more, eek!) and got to work with installing it. I'm about 50% done with the cabinets and drawers and so far, I'm in love with how it looks!The color/pattern I picked is called "Cross Me Seaglass" and it matched our wall color so well. I love the slight geometric print as well, it make it a little bit modern. Here's a close-up - it has various shades of teals, blues and greens with the white background.
Here it is in one of the cabinets - it makes me smile to open them to see this fun pop of color!

And even though installing shelf liner is not back breaking work like cabinetry, it's still a ton of work to measure, cut and smooth out all that paper! I ordered the option with the self adhesive on the back and I've been very pleased with the quality of the paper and how smooth it goes down.

So that's my "fun" contribution to the kitchen! I can't wait to start putting all our kitchen stuff back away in the cabinets!

The Kitchen: Current State

Things are in high gear and we are making more progress. We're basically at Home Depot's mercy at this point, waiting for our countertops to be templated and then ordered. But here's a quick sneak peak at what you would see in the kitchen if you came over...Cabinets! Microwave! Finished floors! And you can't see it from this picture, but the fridge is in it's permanent spot and the water/ice has been hooked back up!

Hopefully the stove will go back in this week. We ordered amazing cabinet knobs and pulls from Ebay and they should be here Thursday. I think they will really make the cabinets look finished and I can't wait to see them! I also have 2 special projects to share - hopefully I'll be blogging about one of them this week.

We're in the home stretch!