Home Improvements

About a year ago, Jason and I began discussing the idea of updating the countertops in our kitchen. When we originally stumbled across our soon to be home, it was a spec and was halfway through the building process. We had a say-so in several things we wanted such as light fixtures, faucets, countertop color, etc. but weren’t able to install granite at the time.

Planning Stage

On the right of this picture, you’ll see a small piece of texturized laminate – it’s what was installed in our home when it was first built. The big piece of granite on the left is what we replaced the laminate with. When I originally picked out countertops for our spec home, I found a huge slab of granite in a a local hardware store that I fell in love with. In turn, we searched out the texturized laminate that matched the granite and that’s what was installed in our spec home. When Jason and I began discussing the idea to switch to granite, the granite itself was a no brainer for me – I wanted the same exact thing I saw in the hardware store several years ago. Good news for us, we found it!

We also determined that we wanted our edges to look like the edge pictured above.

After MUCH deliberation, we finally decided on a backsplash pattern similar to the one above, with on exception - the tile blocks would be in a square, not a diamond shape.

Picking out the inserts was relatively easy as well. We decided to accent our kitchen with fleur de lis décor and chose this insert which resembled a fleur de lis, but is not as strong of a fleur de lis as the ones you see in the background of the picture.

Before

Here’s a before picture of our kitchen. Yes, I usually have drawers in the holes you see in the cabinets – and yes, my countertops are usually more crowded than what is shown. :0)

See how the countertop and backsplash was all the same? I wanted to stray away from that look altogether this time around.

My kitchen was scattered all over my breakfast area and dining room for the week!

Demo

Here’s my kitchen in the demo phase. No more countertops, sink, or backsplash!

This is when the dust started to accrue.

The granite arrived! YAY!

This is after the granite was installed, prior to the backsplash.

Finished

Here’s the backsplash…

Close-up of the tile insert.

Stove side of the kitchen

We also changed out the piece in our laundry room to granite.

Here it is….

All done!

I can’t tell you how excited I am! I feel like I’ve fallen in love all over again - I could just sit in my kitchen and stare at it all day! Part of me can’t believe that we finally went through with this project and finished it. We’ve talked about it for so long, it felt like just a dream. I’m also grateful I’ll be able to cook food again – eating out for the week grew old pretty quickly! :0)

Have you ever done any home improvements? Were you happy with the outcome?