Kitchen Updates

Mike and I have been debating for quite a while now whether we want to move or stay in our current home.  We love the location and layout of our current house, so we ultimately decided to stay put for at least 4-5 more years as we save up for what hopefully will be our forever home. 

Since we'll be here for the foreseeable future, we've started making a few updates around the house.  We added a patio, will soon be replacing some sliding doors with french doors, fenced in our yard, and best of all - made a few updates to the kitchen!  I spend so much time in the kitchen, I thought I might as well make it a little prettier.  My dream kitchen is totally open with a giant flat island in the center, but since a complete renovation is out of the question, I settled for some new tile floors and a fun new backsplash. 

Here are the before pictures. Those tiles made me crazy!! They were just terrible, and forever looked filthy, even right after I mopped. 

We had no backsplash before.  If I had known how easy it was to put up a backsplash, I would have done it years ago (not that I did it myself, but i'm pretty sure I could have after I saw how easy it was). 

A few weeks ago I picked up this island at a consignment store and I am absolutely in love with it!  It's so great to have some more counter space.  I usually keep my fruit bowl there, and it's a great place to put an appetizer when we have guests. It's also great to have hooks on the end for my purse and lunchbox.  They used to always end up on the table, crowding dinner time. 

 I'm in love with our new backsplash.  I dream of carrera marble counter tops, but this marble backsplash will have to do for now.  It was actually reasonable priced for marble at about $11 a foot.  We found it at Home Depot. 

We found our new floor tile at Lowes.  We thought we'd stick with the gray flooring to tie in the countertops and the lighter gray marble backsplash tiles.  

I'm glad we went with the dark grout for a little contrast.  Now I just need to work on a few styling updates, and we'll be all set!

All in all this was about a four day process. Although it was challenging not having a kitchen for a few days, it was totally worth it!