Remodel Results

I realized that I haven't posted the pictures of the finished kitchen remodeling on the blog yet. This is an overview shot of the whole kitchen plus a glimpse of the bathroom. All the appliances are new, the refrigerator, the double oven/microwave (new in June), the stovetop/hood, and the dishwasher. Our other dishwasher was actually less than a year old, but with all of the money we spent on this remodel, it wasn't that much more to get a new dishwasher to match the other new stainless steel appliances. A friend's dishwasher was on its last legs and we gave her our "old" one plus the new one is even quieter than that one, so we gained a lot with that decision too.

This is a detail shot of the new sink and new tile backsplash. We didn't have a backsplash at all before, just the plain wall, which didn't hold up well near the sink area and all of that excess wetness. I love the new backsplash, especially the more decorative part on the bottom. The sink is bigger on the left than on the right, so it more easily fits some of the pans. The bottle-looking thing you see on the left is the soap dispenser that matches the faucet. At the time I took this picture, they had not yet drilled a hole in the granite to put that in. The faucet is way cool--it turns on and off when you touch it. There is no need to mess with the handle except to control the flow. The end of it is a sprayer, which is cool too, since our old one gave out years ago.

This is the other side of the kitchen that wasn't shown in the overview shot. It looks so big and empty here but it's definitely full of stuff not.

Notice the magnet on the dishwasher. That's how we discovered that maybe this is a stainless steel-looking dishwasher rather than an actual stainless steel one, since the magnet sticks to the front. I had to have some way to indicate clean vs. dirty dishes and I was happy that we could still use our magnet on the dishwasher for that purpose.

This is the new kitchen island. I wanted drawers instead of cabinets, so this was their solution. I wasn't happy with how plain they look, so we got some drawer handles that they will install later when they fix/clean up some things. So far I love these drawers. It's so much easier to be able to open a drawer to get out a pot or pan instead of having to dig it out under a bunch of other stuff. I also love that the drawers are so big. I can put all my kitchen utensils in one drawer now instead of two.

This is a closer look at the bathroom. We had a bathtub in there before and now there is only a shower. The main tile on the shower wall is the same as the tile on the floor. There are two lines of gray tile like the gray tile you see on that half wall on the outside plus the floor is covered with the same small gray tile. They also put a seat/shelf on the corner and a recessed area for shampoo/conditioner/soap on the inside of that half wall. I love the way this shower looks with the black on the glass door.

It's been so nice to get a bathroom back on the first floor where we can wash our hands and go to the bathroom. Unfortunately, the shower curtain rod in the kids' bathroom has been acting up and keeps falling down, so it's nice to have a second shower for the kids to use.

This is a detail shot of the sink area in the bathroom. I love the color of the faucet. It matches the color of the shower head and the towel racks and such. It looks so elegant. The mirror is the same one we've had and it fits in well with the new dark granite. They also added a tile backsplash in here.

In a future blog post, I'll have to detail what we didn't like. That is a long blog post by itself. In summary though, we don't like how they didn't clean up very well at the end of the job. We've spent the whole last week (mostly Patrick) doing a lot of cleaning before we could move stuff back into place. Like I said already, that is a long blog post by itself.