Kitchen Back Splash Project

Bane of my existence!

What began as a simple "hey let's take down that 90s looking back splash & slap up some more modern tile" turned into an entire weekend of destruction & trips to various home improvement stores.  In the end it looks absolutely amazing & has completely changed the look of the kitchen!  Friday evening we began with ripping this nasty 90s, glazed mess with an ivy design off of the wall behind the stove.  Bleh.  I should mention the home was originally built in 1949, so some things are totally updated & remodeled but some others are a bit dated.  For instance, this disgusting backsplash!  Left is a close up of the project in question, below is a better "before" picture:
 

BEFORE - kitchen

Saturday morning we were up and at 'em before 8:00am with a trip to Lowe's, then Home Depot for supplies, tile, a tile saw and other goodies.  Leave it to me to pick out something that weighs a TON and is extremely difficult to adhere to the wall surface.  Michael being a pro at almost anything and everything he does, managed to make it work.  I was a pretty decent assistant and designer, but the labor portion goes all to his credit.  We began just thinking we'd do the back splash only.  Then, my absolute hatred of the wood range hood came into play.  "Let's just rip the whole sucker out".  It was quite therapeutic ripping that nasty thing off of the wall!  This of course required much more tile (and money!) and an entire new range hood, more than doubling my estimated project cost...well, what can ya do?  The vast majority of the project was completed on Saturday, with finishing up at a decent time Sunday morning.  Mom and Mike even made it down around 1:30pm on Sunday to have lunch with us, and everything was in order and clean by that time!   

Destruction:  commence!

Ordered from Overstock.com

I was able to research and get a much better price on the range hood that we wanted by buying it from Overstock.com rather than Home Depot or Lowe's.  Here is the one I picked out, and it arrives tomorrow!  I'll update with a completed photo as soon as it arrives.  Next up:  replacing the light fixture above the sink (already purchased but I really need to give poor Michael a break...) and new counter tops!  It's amazing how updating one thing suddenly makes something else look totally crappy.   Ah, home ownership. 

Fixture to go above sink, from Home Depot

Ah!  Not good for the ol' OCD

AFTER!  (Except for range hood!)

Different view

I'm sick of these too, but had to share.

I think anyone and everyone that is on Facebook is sick and tired of these internet memes going around.  I've seen the SEO one, Marketing, Stay at home mom's...but this one actually made me laugh!

Click image to see actual size.

2012, pretty busy so far!

I've really slacked off on the updates lately.  2012 has proved to be a pretty intense year so far, especially as work goes.  That being said it's already brought forth tons of exciting opportunity and we're both eager to see what the months ahead will bring!  I'll leave that somewhat cryptic for now, but onto more fun things to discuss.

The Superbowl!  Everyone was giving Madonna a hard time for her lip synching.  I thought she gave a great, tasteful performance and for being 53...the woman has still got it.  No doubt about that.  She did confess to lip synching the first three numbers, but did give a live performance of "Like a Prayer".   Perhaps I'm biased as she has been and will always be an icon and favorite of mine.  Naturally as a die hard Colts fan I was ecstatic to see the Patriots lose.  Them losing in Lucas Oil Stadium added a little more sugar on top!  The commercials this year were much better than in recent years too, in my opinion.  The dog in the fat suit, the french bulldog racing the greyhounds, the baby in the slingshot stealing Dorito's...so many good ones!  I was so disappointed that they didn't play my favorite Volkswagen one.  If you haven't seen it, check it out here:

Dogs, Star Wars...what's not to love?!

 

In the realm of reading, I have just started Stephen King's, "Under the Dome" at my Dad's recommendation.  I am about 100 pages in (it's 1400 pages!) and so far so good.  This one will take a while to get through, especially at the pace I'm currently going to a review is probably pretty far off.  It takes place in a small rural town in Maine and just as the title would indicate, a mysterious force field suddenly appears over the city preventing anyone inside leaving, and vice versa.  Tons of interesting characters so far, and I'm still in the character development stage.  Stephen King has been hit or miss for me.  One of my favorite books of all time is Salem's Lot, however he really missed for me personally with "Duma Key".  I didn't get it...at all. 

I hope everyone has had a great and successful start to 2012!