The Kitchen, Finally

Let's cut to the chase, since I made you wait a few weeks, before I show you some process pictures. The bottom line is that we LOVE LOVE LOVE our new kitchen. We did not, however, love the process. I was too frustrated to blog about the progress while it was going on, after the initial few days. Communication issues, scheduling delays, etc. But it's all done now and we couldn't be happier with the final outcome. So without further ado, kitchen money shots:

So to backtrack a bit from where we left off earlier this month, here are some installation pictures for the counters. They set the join between the two pieces just to the left of the sink, using giant clamps to hold it in place.

I wasn't thrilled with the join. I had suggested going to the right of the sink (which is usually under the drying rack or at least a little more hidden) or at the sink itself, but our installer preferred to do it away from spots that are constantly wet and I think also wanted smaller pieces to work with, though he didn't admit it. The two sides weren't entirely smooth and I could feel a little edge, which was very annoying when wiping things like, say, messy peanut butter, from the counter. He argued that up to 1/16'' was acceptable but agreed to come back and try to smooth it, especially since he had to even something else out as well, and I was much happier with the result the second time.

For paint color, we ended up with Halcyon Green, which if you look at the paint chart from the previous post, is in the second column from the right, second one down. We are thrilled with it - bold but also muted, decidedly cool-toned, and somewhere in between blue and green.

Here it is, with our old light fixture and old (now dreadful) olive-colored blinds. If you scroll back up, you'll note that D mostly won the light fixture contest from our mood board and we went with the Pottery Barn McCarthy 3-Light Pendant. Though I don't dislike it, the finger prints may quite possibly drive me crazy. Though I think back to the original light when we first moved in (the first one we replaced, our first foray into do-it-yourself), and I think of how far we've come.

When the kitchen job was finally done, we did the finishing touches, like swapping out the annoying corded olive roman shades with some beautiful cordless gray ones from Home Depot. I don't remember having such pretty options years ago when we settled for the last ones. Obviously cordless and affordable shades have made huge strides in 9 years. Who knew?

I may delve into some of the smaller details of our kitchen in future updates (the under-cabinet lighting deserves its own post, it is so awesome) but I'll leave it there for now. One more upgrade off the to-do list.