Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Family Time Warp

I was quickly browsing through my local Value Village this morning, ostensibly for "Kip"-style glasses (a'la Napoleon Dynamite) for Damon's Halloween costume, when "Let's Do the Time Warp Again" from the Rocky Horror Picture Show came over the loudspeaker.

I actually find that song incredibly annoying, but I have felt like I was in a bit of a time warp the last few days.  I finally decided to load all the pictures from our old CPU onto our new computer.

Yeah, we upgraded two years ago--wanna make somethin' of it??

Anyway, I found lots of adorable pictures of my kids which no one else will likely find as fun as I do, but I also found some before pictures of our kitchen in Utah.  We replaced the counters, appliances, put in a granite tile back splash, had the finish on the kitchen cabinets renewed and installed pulls.  We budgeted carefully and found great deals.  All told, we spent around $5,000 and dramatically changed the look and feel of the space.

View #1 Before



View #1 After


View #2 Before



View #2 After


View#3 Before


View #3 After

View #4 Before


View #4 After



Ahh--I love it when a plan comes together {{pat my own back}}.


It's gratifying to see what a difference we made in the life of that kitchen, and to know that I can make some happy changes to our home now, a little at a time.

Speaking of which, we are receiving a new fridge today after some unnecessary drama getting it in our kitchen doorway.  Let me just say that the old adage to measure twice is good advice.  With new appliances, the kitchen looks--and functions--so much better.  The rest of the things I want to do in there are mercifully much, much cheaper.

Does anybody else besides me like to relive the glory days of successful projects long after they are complete?  Feel free to brag to me...

4 comments:

  1. Submit to Better After.  Because its better after and you deserve some recognition for money well spent.  :)  How's that for demanding?

    I'm LOVING your fireplace surround. 

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  2. Hey Kate, You are soooo bossy and demanding that I did it--submitted it to Better After :). That's a fun site! I love the fireplace, too. I didn't actually do most of the work (except spray painting the surround on our gas fireplace and caulking/painting it once everything was installed), but I designed it myself. It cost around $400 to completely rehab it. Completely worth it--it was so ugly before.

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  3. I found your blog from the link over at Thrive, and I was just admiring your kitchen redo. I think we have the same cabinets! I was wondering -- what do you mean when you say, "had the finish on the kitchen cabinets renewed"? They do look nicer, but I can't quite figure out what you did to them. Thanks for the info!

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  4. Hey! Thanks for stopping by. So, there is a company in Utah, where we lived at the time, who specializes in renewing wood finishes. They use proprietary products (of course :) ), but they basically used a cleaner to deep clean all the wood surfaces, then put a wood conditioner/protector on. They also touched up some parts of the finish that were worn through, and restained some of the areas that had faded. They also cleaned all the hardware. We added the knobs. They worked for about a day and did a good job, but now that I've seen how they do it, I bet you could do it yourself with products that are probably available at Home Depot.

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