Our Kitchen Remodel

As most of you know, Steven and I decided that we had enough with our ugly kitchen and we wanted to do some updating. If any of you have been in my kitchen, you might know what I am talking about.. We had the ugly 1970's orange-ish, yellow-ish tile (yes, tile) for our counters. In fact, our contractor said these tiles back in the day were the top of the line counters because it had hand painted flowers on almost every tile (which makes it near impossible to clean. So we were happy to get rid of them. I wanted new counters, Steven wanted a new floor..so we did both! In fact, we did more then both. At the end of it all we ended up doing new counters, back splash, sink, floor (down to the back door), new hardware for the cabinets, new lights and fan, new paint, and a new table. So almost everything!
 It was definitely a really hard 3 1/2 weeks! Our contractor is fabulous, but he is such a perfectionist that he takes FOREVER to get things done. Of course in the end I am thrilled, but it sucked at the time. It is funny because we completely underestimated the time and what we weren't able to do while he was remodeling. At the first week or so we decided that since we didn't have a sink that we would just put everything in the dishwasher to clean it. Well a week later we realized that the dishwasher wouldn't be able to work because it isn't hooked up to anything! So we had wonderful rotten milk and other stuff sitting in our dishwasher. Another thing we didn't realize was that our water for our ice machine would be turned off.. and for me, that is a terrible thing! While he was remodeling we had no door which made Aubree think she could go down the stairs at any moment. We also had to be off the floor for a few days so we weren't able to cook anything. It was pretty much terrible. We had our microwave and table in our living room along with anything else we needed. I ended up doing my dishes at my in law's house as well as my parents house. All the stuff around the house was lacking because we had to lock ourselves in the two bedrooms because the drilling was extremely loud and the weather wasn't nice enough outside. Anyway, it was terrible and I hope to never do it again! :) But now that it is over, I am extremely excited about the result, it was definitely worth it!
Here are the before and after pictures..

And here are some pictures when we were under construction..

  I thought our floor was ugly before, but when our contractor pulled up the old floor he found this hideous tile underneath! YUCK!