BEFORE and AFTER

For those of you who didn't see our kitchen before, this post won't mean much but I wanted to show some of the work we've done in the last 6 months on our place. This is mostly for our friends and family out of state who have asked how it all turned out and probably won't get to see it finished. We (mostly Caleb) have been BUSY people! Yard work, house work, garage work... you name it, we've done it in the last 6 months!

Unfortunately, we forgot to take a good "before" picture but here's a small idea of how our kitchen used to look. Mint green paint, ivy wall paper, wood cabinets... The back splash was a white ceramic tile with an ivy print every 5th tile or so. The counter tops were a fake wood laminate (gross). Who does that?? I wish I would have gotten a good BEFORE picture- darn! Oh well, here's a little peak:

BEFORE:
Check out that ivy wallpaper...


And of course matching ivy tiles...


This one was taken after we started painting the cabinets so believe it or not this wasn't when it was at it's worst. You can kind of see the fake wood laminate countertops (this was HIDEODOROUS!):




It's not huge or fancy but it's a lot better than before! New tile, new hardware on the cabinets, new light fixtures, new paint and a whole lot of work later...

AFTER:
Here is the new improved shot of our kitchen:





We've also been planting shrubs, a little herb garden and just trying to tidy up the place so it will show well on the market. Here is snapshot of our herb garden (which has more than paid for itself in how much I use the herbs for recipes)




Kudos to Caleb for taking on the kitchen project which was completely out of his comfort zone. For learning to lay tile so beautifully and for staying up late so many nights to get it all done! It was well worth it!