Kitchen Before

Updates to the kitchen start tomorrow, so I wanted to get a few "before" pictures today. The fruit border.....she's coming down tomorrow. And, the lavender wall is getting painted over. I actually like the color, but it doesn't go with anything I have or anything in the house. The other walls that are a pale yellow, are staying the way they are. I didn't think I would keep that color, but since their isn't really much sunshine here, I need the yellow! Over the weekend Tommy and I are getting the border and paint done, so it will be ready for the tile guy. He will be coming to install a tile backsplash as soon as we can get the tile picked out for him. This is the window seat. It is one of the features that drew us to the house! Little did we know, that it is actually a do-it-yourself project disaster! It looks good, but if you do much investigating you realize that they didn't put anything together correctly. When we looked at the house they had a small kitchen table pulled up to the seat and used that for their eating area. We couldn't really find a table for 5 that worked well there, but that is okay. Our bigger table, pulled to the center of the room works fine. The main problem with the windowseat are the cabinets that frame it. They aren't attached to anything. They are just pushed in there. Their height doesn't line up correctly with my other cabinets and they are too deep for the space. And finally, the tops, well there are none. They actually just have giant pieces of slate lying on top of the cabinets! That is a disaster waiting to happen around here. Unfortunately, there isn't a great solution to fixing it. Two separate contractors have recommended just pulling it out, but I don't really want to do away with it. In a perfect world, the cabinets would be screwed in and they would extend my granite countertops over the one and add a matching granite top for the other. The problem is making the cabinets line up correctly, and matching the granite. It would have to be a near perfect match since one piece would have to seem with my counters. The last contractor suggested pulling the whole thing and just creating a new windowseat, with bench storage that extends the full length of the area. It looks like that is what we will have to go with. We will have a few days while he is working on the tile to decide.

This is the island. I am not sure what happened to the island that was original to the house. I suspect it was taken apart and that is where the cabinets around the window seat came from. They replaced it with an antique island that we like okay. I know that a contrasting island is really trendy right now, but it isn't my personal preference. I especially don't love the black granite top, but it costs a small fortune to replace a slab that big, and again it is too hard to match our countertops. For now it is staying, minus those metal barstools, they will be gone as soon as I can find a replacement. Thankfully it functions great for us! I love being able to feed the girls breakfast and lunch there and having them sit here for crafts, homework and cooking.

Here is one last closer view of the before look. I am excited to update it more to our taste and can't wait to see how it turns out!