Finished kitchen island

When Brendan and I purchased our home in January 2010 we knew it needed some TLC.  The house was built in 2001 and although we loved it, we did not like the kitchen/living room area.  However, we saw the potential.  The day we closed we left the bank, and headed over to the house and immediately started demo on the house.  We ripped up the nasty, and stained carpet, and the next day I came to the house after I had gotten everyone lunch, remember, I was 32 weeks pregnant at this point, so from a work standpoint, I was pretty useless.  I came home to my 85 year old grandpa taking out our kitchen wall. 

The box of a kitchen

 Kitchen to living room

 Entry hall

See, lots of TLC needed!

The kitchen before from the MLS listing

Then the demo.

Grandpa had way too much fun with that crow bar!  We ripped up the floor and planned on putting in dark wood floor.  After two weeks of non-stop work by my wonderful husband, and amazing family, we had the first reno phase complete. (These pictures are not great by any means.  The light in this room is so funky and I'm a horrible photographer and took these with my phone, but you get the idea)

We now have a larger area rug in this room and a storage piece under the TV, so it looks a bit different.

The last two pictures were taken in March 2010, pre Drew.  As you can see the kitchen is too open and we knew this would be the case going in.  We wanted to build a kitchen island.  We got a start on the project in March of 2010 with buying all the materials, and Brendan got to work.  Then Drew was born and life as we knew it came to a standstill.  We were so overwhelmed as new parents that we couldn't even think about working on house projects.  So the island sat in our basement for about 8 months. Then we decided it was time to get it done, and we did.  Brendan wanted to make the counter tops out of concrete and they turned out fabulously!  Brendan used to build homes in his previous life so he has some idea of building, but had never made concrete counter tops before. 

Three weeks before Drew's first birthday party, that was our deadline, Brendan and our neighbor moved the island that was oh so heavy and each of the counter tops up to the kitchen. The small counter top weighs 250lbs. and the large one 300lbs.  Brendan then put the finishing touches on it up in the kitchen and we put all new hardware on all the cabinets.  We also put in a dark brown granite sink to replace the gnarly stained white one that came with the house, along with a new faucet.  The kitchen is now mostly done, we are now just going to do a tile back splash and purchase stainless steel appliances.  See what you think.

Don't mind my crock pot, we had french dips tonight for dinner.

 We ended up not staining the concrete, we ended up liking how they turned out with just the sealer and when polished.

So there is the transformation of our box of a kitchen, to our great room and kitchen island, that only took oooohhh, about a year or more, but I'm very happy with how it looks now!