The (Mostly) Finished Kitchen

Last Friday, my mom graciously agreed to watch the girls for me so I could put the last finishing touches on my kitchen. I have to admit, I might have been a little bit giddy from the sheer joy of having a kitchen back together in one piece. (Remember what it looked like here??) It looks beautiful... or at least I think so. My husband has even been bragging about it to people which is a big thing for him since he usually acts so calm and collected. 

Are you ready for it??

Ta-da!!

The hardware is the same that I bought for the bathroom and I have to say that it makes the kitchen look high end. Since the kitchen is the first thing you see when you walk in the house, I knew it had to be a standout and so far, everyone who has come in the house has agreed how wonderful it is (it might be because I was telling them that it was.. but hopefully not!)

The whole process took about 2 weeks to finish all of the cupboard doors and the trim work. I put 4 coats of urethane on the cabinets since they'll tend to get touched more and have water spilled on them. A few more coats now meant less crying later if they got ruined. 

I had originally been planning on painting the cabinets white, but now I'm glad that I went with a more dramatic colour to pop against the nice oak of the floors. 

The nice thing about staining as opposed to painting, is that it really lets the grain of the wood show through.

And since I'm terrible at remembering to take a before picture.. here is a glimpse of what it looked like in February at my daughter's birthday party. You can't see all of the kitchen but you can get the gist of it. 

Awesome picture of me, right??

Eventually we will want to switch out our stove and dishwasher for stainless steel ones to match the microwave and fridge, but for the meantime, they work and so there's no excuse to get rid of them. We are also planning on changing out the countertop since that's a relatively cheap 

So what do you think? Do you think it was worth the effort?