The very, very beginning, the "before." Off white, very dirty berber carpet and off-white linoleum. classic.

Santa brought 5,000 pallets of Pergo, and I decided the wall needed to be something other than "eggshell."

stylin ...

the night before Christmas, and all through the house, there wasn't a thread of old carpet, thanks to my spouse ...

Kitchen Before - no workspace due to weird elevated "counter"

Henry, as usual, helping.

not the renovation we planned

more removal to create an open back wall

more Henry

goodbye linoleum

hello flooring

unnamed

best money saver yet; allowed us to keep existing cabinets, we purchased two large floor cabinets from Home Depot to add to make an "island" workspace

We purchased new cabinet doors and painted them with the gel

How we spent Christmas

taking old wall cabinets down

Before cutting down the "counter" - we got a contractor to help us with this

painting the cabinets - 3 day process

I took off the doors on the cabinet infrastructure and then painted it before putting on the new painted doors

drawer on left has 1 coat of gel, rest is two coats in

the two new cabinets to support the counter expansion/island -- before taking down the elevated "counterspace" .. so very 1980s

cutting down the counter and rewiring the sockets

Hooray! an island forms!

added this one -- we had butcher block-ish counters -- they were actually fake wood/ formica ...

almost there

Tiling took three entire weekends -- friday night to late sunday night.

first we cut into our drywall and anchored the ikea metal shelving to the studs, then restored the drywall/patched it so we could tile over it

more tiling .....

the shelves and metal vent hood are from Ikea, we cut into our drywall and anchored them to the studs so we would tile over them for a clean look

We ordered a tall, 6 inch pull out cabinet and then ordered custom doors to paint for a pantry right by the fridge

what it looks like now ...

closer view of the gel and hardward and marble countertop (we paid to have installed professionally)

new fun light switches from Home Depot

the Island, which has been a wonderful social addition to the home

the pantry. Henry's treats are kept in there, he guards it like a sentry

closer view of the pantry. we also went for a counter depth fridge to add more space since the kitchen is pretty small

the finished look