Pages

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Countertops Suck

Warning: This is a picture heavy post.

Our countertops were installed on March 15th.  It is now July 31st and I can say that the countertop/tile backsplash project is complete.

Holy bologna*.

*I hate that this is how to spell bologna.

I love do-it-yourself house projects because A) you have the self-satisfaction of doing it yourself B) you save money (or hope to), C) you don't have to do any work because your husband does it all, and D) it takes a hell of a lot longer than it would have if you had just paid a professional.  Wait, what?

I say that our countertops were installed on March 15th, so it's safe to say that the demolition of our kitchen started around March 1st.  Exactly 10 days before I was slated to host a baby shower at our house.  I came home from a movie with Haley and the kids to find that my lovely husband had already ripped off the laminate backsplash and huge portion of the countertops.


Ryan insisted that I could still host the baby shower and "cover up" the length of the wall that was missing the backsplash and riddled with left over adhesive.

Sure, babe.  Sure.

Removing the countertops and the backsplash seemed never-ending, and I swear that everyday our kitchen (and who am I kidding - our house!) turned more and more chaotic.  My godfather, Frank, was a God-send throughout this whole project between his knowledge, tools, and supportive, helping hands.  We love Frank.

Here are some before photos.  Because of Ryan's hasty backsplash and countertop removal - I never got a good "before" picture of the whole kitchen.





Some chaos (including the discovery of some dry rot in the wall between our bathroom and kitchen):







And finally, the finished countertops:





So, the counterops were in and all was great.  They just so happened to be installed on the week that I was battling bronchitis.  No joke - I slept through the entire installation.  I literally went to sleep with no countertops and woke up to granite ones.  I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz... Or something like that.

We really slacked on the backsplash portion of the project, and this is where we both with we would have just contracted this work out to get it over and done with.  C'est la vie.

Once we got our shiz together (decided on tile, purchased tile, and ordered grout), Ryan was able to get the tile up and grouted. It certainly didn't happen over night, but this is what our kitchen looks like now:


I'm really happy with how it all turned out.  Is it sad/bad that with the completion of this chaos, I was most excited to have our paper towel roll resume it's rightful place?

No, no it's not.  It's the little things, people!

So, there you have it.  It took nearly five months, lots of hard work from my Hubby (and Frank), and lots of patience from me.  Even though I was seriously itching to get this project finished, I tried not to pester Ryan about moving faster in his progress since he was doing all of the work.  I can honestly say that I contributed nothing to this project - except picking out the granite, tile, and grout color, and  helped clean/scrape the grout off.  But give me a break, I've been sick and/or pregnant during this whole ordeal!

What do you think?  Have you ever tackled a (majority) do-it-yourself project that took forever?  I would love to hear about your experience.

Take Luck,
LP 

2 comments:

  1. wow! it doesn't even look like the same kitchen. IN LOVE with how the back splash looks with the new counter tops!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I LOVE your new kitchen, lady! The granite is beautiful & the backsplash works perfectly with the kitchen. =)

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for stopping by! I love reading comments, so please feel free to leave them!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...