Renovation Realities

Well, it won't make a very interesting episode of "Renovation Realities" on HGTV, but hopefully it would qualify for "Bang for your Buck." I'm referring to our recent kitchen undertaking, or rather overhaul. The story: basically, we scrimped and saved our change in a special jar (Huntington Bank) and called in our oh so useful family members, and this week we accomplished our goal of remodeling our outdated and almost dilapidated kitchen. There were some re-plumbing and re-wiring issues, but I left that to the pros (i.e. my dad and his friend), and other than a few manageable glitches the project went very smoothly. Here are some befores and afters (hopefully you will be able to differentiate between the two):

(I even included the "before" mess)

The pics don't do the job justice, but I'm really happy with the way the project turned out. With the exception of a few finishing details and a new stove (keeping fingers crossed that the jar has a little left in it), our kitchen is done. We were able to get it all done in about a week. Thank heavens! I'm ready to cook up a storm and have you all over.