I realized that I never really posted some “after” pictures of the whole kitchen remodel. So I thought I would post some pictures of our finished Kitchen Concrete Counter Tops for you today.
I don’t know why we didn’t post these last year… Maybe because we just started using the kitchen right away. Maybe because the counters are NEVER clear enough to take a pic. Maybe because the kitchen really isn’t done and there’s a few things we would like to finish, someday. But the truth is, we LOVE our Kitchen and our remodel is the best thing ever. 🙂
The counter tops are arguably the best part of the whole project… I really love the way they look, how easily they wipe clean and seriously, they are made of concrete so, like I can’t hurt them (they have hurt a head or two before the boys figured out they shouldn’t bang their heads while running under them.. but everyone is fine) 🙂
We will need to re-seal them every 18 – 24 months but it’s a pretty simple process.. when we remember to order the seal ( Ryan: since you are reading this, can this count as a reminder to order that? 🙂 ) And that’s all the maintenance these counter tops require.
Anyways, the other day I cleared the counters and snapped a few pictures so I can share them with you!
But first, here are some before pics, So crazy to think this use to be my kitchen….
Prime Day is July 11, are you ready? There are a couple of things you should do so you are ready to take advantage of the amazing deals that are coming this year!
The post may contain affiliate links. If you shop through our links I could get a small commission at no extra cost to you.
First of all and Most important: If you do not have a PRIME membership with Amazon you’ll need it before you can order any of the Prime Day special sales. But don’t worry. You can sign up for a free 30 days! Enjoy the benefits of the sales prices and all that Prime membership has to offer. If you don’t won’t to continue your membership you can cancel anytime!!
Next, Â mark your calendars!! Sales will start some time in the evening of July 10th and will be released periodically for the next 30 hours!!
Follow our Facebook page to see updates and deals on Prime Day!
It may be a good idea to start your wishlist and have a talk with your husband/wife about a budget?! (only if you want to avoid problems at the next budget meeting!! ?)
Last year there were lots of appliances… Amazon sold 215,000 Instant Pots alone during last years Prime Day. If you are in the market for one or even a 2nd one (wouldn’t that be amazing???!!) I expect they will have another great deal this year! Â I also expect to see a lot of big play items like trampolines, play sets for the back yard, toys of all kinds so think Christmas and Birthday stock piling! Â Electronics were a big sales category last year as well! Even household things like robotic vacuums… really it’s going to be a ton of different things, big and small!
Something new this year, Amazon has started selling IKEA Items… so maybe we’ll see some deals there too?!!
If you can’t tell already, I’m really excited!! It’s fun to see all the deals and I’d love to help you all get what you are wishing for! 🙂 So leave a comment or send a message and let me know what you will be looking for so I can keep an eye out for you!
Happy shopping,
Deanna Grace
New to Loveandscribbles? check out these other articles that may interest you:
Let’s take a look at some of the awesome new details in our kitchen project!!
We have a dish washer!! And I’m back to running it every night which makes me feel like my life is coming back together again! 🙂
This beautiful sink we bought at Lowes is gorgeous! I knew from the start that I wanted a farmhouse  (also known as apron front) style and I’m so glad I went with a giant one basin one!!
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This massive amazing garbage disposal is my husband’s pride and joy! haha
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Its a Waste King, and apparently it’s able to chop up anything you throw at it.. including bones!!??
My GE Stove top. I finally have a gas cook top!! And now I feel like I am actually really cooking 🙂 (no offense to anyone who likes electric.. it’s just not my cup of tea) And thanks to our new friend Kevin for giving up a Saturday to connect the gas line in our crazy hot attic 🙂
The day has finally arrived! I am soooo excited as we get ready for this huge day for the kitchen project!  For this day we asked for a few more friends to help! We ended up with 5 guys for the concrete. And I think that was the perfect amount. And Tiffani  and I were there for whatever we could help with!  We rented a mixer from Home Depot and got to work!
DIY Concrete Countertops
We already had our formula for the color figured out. So the guys just had to follow it for each batch. Â I will say we had a few issues with consistency in the batches of cement. All of the blogs and youtube videos will say you want the concrete to be pretty think and that is true. But there seems to be a happy medium where it also needs to not be to dry! Â All in all most of the batches came out pretty well and with my Father in law and Jonathan at the finishing trowels it came out beautiful!
And a very important step was vibrating the edges.. to make sure to get as many air bubbles out as we could. ( After the forms came off you can really tell where we took time to make sure we vibrated really well and where we may have rushed a little bit)
It took us about 6 hours or so I would say to get it all in and smoothed out. And then the waiting game for it to set a bit to be able to run the trowel through it again…
This week has been a full one and very exciting for the kitchen project!!
It began with prep prep prep! 🙂  Covering the new floors with paper, patching up some more holes, etc.
sidenote: I’m leaving it like this as long as I can! protecting these floors during construction is no joke!
The walls were textured (thank you to my Father in Law for doing a great job!) on Tuesday afternoon.
The girls flew into action on Wednesday night for painting the ceiling and walls! Want to see?
Sherwin Williams Paint from Lowes. Salty Dog in High gloss
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I love the dark color and I think we get away with it because it’s only in a few spots and everything else will be a calm color/feel. Â It’s also high gloss. The benefits to this is it will be easily cleaned and it also gives a great shine to it! We also painted the drop ceiling a new white color.. I don’t remember which white.. there are far to many options for white!!
We took a break Friday night for a wonderful birthday date!! Ryan’s birthday was Saturday but since we knew we would need the whole day for the kitchen, we took off friday night to dinner and a movie! It was great to have a sitter for fun instead of work 😉 And it’s always fun spoiling and spending time with my husband! Man, I love that guy!! 🙂
And he makes 33 look smokin’
Saturday Morning (after more birthday presents!! ) We got to work. These guys put in something like 13 hours on this kitchen today! And it really shows… It starting to look amazing and this is the fun stuff, we actually get to see the transformation (instead of all the work hiding inside the walls or wherever)
We decided to wire the oven and get that in, in hopes of allowing me something to cook in! The cabinet for the oven/microwave was a bit to big for me, so the guys had to assemble that one. Â It’s beautiful, seriously!! And I’m super glad Ryan insisted on the Microwave we found at Ikea’s as-is department. It was just a display model, but they took 45% off of the price! Â The oven and microwave together just has such a sleek look! Â very fancy!
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It was a really fun surprise when I came home from picking the boys up to see the progress the guys made while I was gone!! check this out!!
This center cabinet will hold my cooktop. Between the wall cabinets will be where the hood is! and that whole wall will be the backsplash that I am soooo excited about!
I really like how much the molding at the top of the wall cabinets adds just a little finishing touch! There will be molding at the bottom edge of them too!
I Â felt like celebrating the progress so I ran out and bought an apple pie and some ice cream! So, we baked a pie in our brand new oven!! * A note on that.. our manual didn’t say anything about it, but if you get a new oven I suggest turning it on empty at first, there was a lot of smoke and burn off from the factory dust or whatever.. didn’t smell very good at first!
Then we decided to install my little desk area and this little cabinet even has the countertop!!! Â Jonathan used this little area to test out the cement counter! The only thing it needs is some finishing touches and a seal on it. I absolutely love it! And we even put in an outlet and usb outlet into the countertop! (Can you tell I get really annoyed with my phone dying?? haha and I always have to look for a spot to charge.. well, not any more!!)
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I think we were all feeling pretty good about how the hard work is turning out!
And before calling it a day we got one of the pendant lights up! Â It’s gorgeous!
These Home Depot lights look like the ones I fell in love with at pottery barn! but instead of costing over $100 a piece they were $30.00.
30 bucks that’s it!! 🙂
We bought the old-fashioned styled light bulbs at Battery plus and I think it adds a great little touch to them!
I think it’s turning out beautifully! I’m excited to be able to bake some dinners now and give our crockpot and bbq a little bit of a break! And the plan is to work on the sink soon so that’s super exciting!!
And the boys have loved playing with the cardboard…we sure have plenty! 🙂
Well, what do you all think of it all so far? Â Are you able to see the vision? It feels like it is actually working, we may even get a kitchen out of all this! hahaha Yes!!
Friday was crazy awesome— DIY Kitchen demo day!!!!!
We removed the appliances, turned off electricity and cut off the water from under the sink, etc. ( I didn’t, so I actually have no idea how to do that stuff :)…… just being real)
But what I did do was hit those cupboards and tile with hammers!!!! It was really really fun!
Here’s a little slow-mo action of the guys destroying the counter!!!!
Notes: (If you are looking at a project like this, these are just observations)
Prepare for a mess… I know, I know, I was prepared for a mess.. but it was a pretty big one 🙂  And it has extended far beyond the kitchen area… there are boxes piled in our spare room and our Master bedroom.. but even the living room, pictures had to be removed from the wall that shares the kitchen, because our attic entrance is in the closet we currently use as a pantry, that’s sort of a mess too! 🙂 But all worth it, I’m sure.
We didn’t think about things like dust pans for picking up all the scraps. So, a big dustpan would have been nice, We did use a big tub to throw all the random little pieces into and then tossed into the back of the truck. a wheelbarrow would have worked great for that as well. Â (the men are taking it all to the dump this morning.) The Shop-Vac we purchased was wonderful. Once we picked up all the bigger pieces, the vacuum took care of the rest very easily! The boys even had fun helping with that job!
Also, I would suggest plenty of protective equipment. glasses, gloves, wear the right shoes (in our first videos we do not have proper shoes on for this kind of work.. but I went and changed shortly after)
We had a lot of fun once we brought the boys home from Papa and Grandma’s house (what would we do without Grandparents???) Daddy asked William to take his cup from the car and put it in the sink… haha. William’s huge smile was awesome when he opened the door and realized there was no sink. Check out the video.
So, we accomplished a lot in the first day! removed all of the old kitchen, removed the side wall. Began opening the doorway, removing the pocket door and moving the outlets and light switches. We also pulled up all the carpet in the dining room!! YAY!
There were quite a few “little” things that had to be addressed. We ended up putting extra support up in the attack just to be sure everything that needs to be supported is. Deciding how far to cut back the doorway, how large of a column we will need to keep for the other side, a pipe needs to be relocated so that we don’t have to have a giant column.
We are so thankful for our friend Jonathan, who knows more than we do about all this stuff and the stuff he doesn’t know? He’s willing to figure out with us, so, that’s awesome!
Next up.. dump run, finishing the door way, box out the column, wall repair, prep for flooring…. and it’s only day 2!
Here’s a video of day number 1!
Day #2 has gone well so far! The guys are continuing to work while I work on getting two very excited, tired boys to bed!
Today the guys got all the trash to the dump. Â We finished up the new wider doorway into the dining room, set up the column, took off all baseboards, Finished up the outlets and switches, patched up some drywall. Â We cut out the rest of the carpet that needed to be removed. I’m sure a few other things….. We’ve just finished smoothing out the holes in the drywall so we’ll have a smooth surface to lay the tile, wallpaper and a couple of places we’ll even be painting.
Day 2 Â making sure our guys are eating, and then doing dishes in the bathtub! haha
Day 3 ( a little lighter day today so we all can have some church/family time)
But the guys still got a lot accomplished today…. Boxed in the column, and door frame finished patching up walls, and more floor prep… oh and another run to Lowes 🙂
Months and months of preparation and planning have all come down to this weekend!
This ol’ kitchen is on it’s way out!
Here’s a little summary of what we have been doing so far.
(We have never done this before and have had little to no professional help in this sooooo we might have done it all wrong as far as order of events etc… but eh, we are here!)
The beginning of the year Ryan started asking a lot of questions about the kitchen and how much money I thought we would need if we were to redo the kitchen. He had been looking at our savings/finances and watching me struggle to get drawers to just open 🙂
So I began to pile some estimates. He helped me search for appliances, I knew I wanted white cabinets and figured IKEA to be the best bargain. Â I had so much fun compiling all my design ideas (you know those ones that you save on pinterest or Houzz.. for that some day when you get to design parts of your house?)
So to begin we talked to our friends Jonathan and Tiffani about helping out with the project, We are blessed with such great friends!
We decided to buy up all the appliances we wanted to replace first. We wanted the convenience of time to allow for finding the best deals. The majority of them being purchased at sears outlet. See my previous post here about appliances.
There are lots of little things to decide about, especially since we are removing a part of 2 walls. one to open into the other room and the other to widen the doorway into the dining room.  We also decided to widen the entire kitchen by moving the counter with the sink into the family room by about 10 inches!
So for awhile we have just been buying buying and buying all the little (and big!) components of the kitchen. The Ikea cabinets and some organization things! Â Read about our IKEA purchasing experience here.
I picked out some awesome elements like a wallpaper for a section of one wall and an amazing sink, faucet, pendant lighting, tile for the backsplash.. etc. Â I planned to make a full shopping list eventually so stay tuned!
For now I’ll just leave a few before pictures here……. and I’ll return with a Demo update soon. Just a couple more hours before the sledge hammers fly!!! 🙂
This is looking in from the play room/family room. All of these upper cabinets will go in order to open everything up.
these drawers have been a challenge for awhile now!
It’s finally here! I’m so nervous but mostly just crazy excited! There is much to do these few days before demo begins..and because I’m an uber plan- ahead kind of girl, I’m freaking out a little, that I haven’t done more preparations.. but we will be fine! And now that it’s here, I will be 1000% on kitchen prep 🙂
I’ve made my menu for nearly a month without a kitchen, I’ll be making frozen crock pot meals and microwave ready lunches. And we will be BBQing a ton! I’m even going to attempt “baking” frozen french fries on the grill for the boys! Thanks Pinterest! I’ll be sure to share some of my recipes! Or you can follow me on Pinterest!
If you don’t love your crock pot, let me urge you to give it a shot! There are sooooo many amazing recipes, some you would never believe came out of the crock pot, seriously! 🙂
I think the thing that makes me the most crazy about not having a kitchen will be washing even a few dishes without a sink :/ Â I think I’ll get a big tub or two for the back yard and pretend we are camping… and of course we’ll be using paper products for everything we can.
We will be assembling cabinets every night this week, we started, but got distracted and then took a family vaca.. and then… anyways it’s been busy around here. So, we have 6 or 7 cabinets to build. William is super excited to help put more drawers together!
Then I’ll pack up the kitchen and move anything we will still need into our office.. where I’ve set up our make shift kitchen!
My beautiful sink came!!! This thing has been a pain.. choosing the size and material with the look I wanted proved to be a difficult task. And then when we finally found one.. it was out of stock… everywhere! When it finally shipped we were leaving for vacation and had to have Fedex put a vacation hold on it, but it is finally here now! And it’s HUGE, I just love this thing…..
Want to see it?
It’s from Vigo, made of composite stone. 36 ” in length! It is apron front and  has 2 different faces so that you can choose which you want showing. (one side has a vertical pattern and the other is plain)
AAAHHHH!! I’m sooo glad I chose a giant sink! I Can’t wait to see it in the kitchen! Â Hey, maybe since it was so hard to pick it and get it here.. it will be super easy, smooth sailing for installation (let’s hope so)!
I can’t think of anything else we are doing right now except prepping food, staring at our beautiful new things all piled in the garage 🙂 and running to Lowes for more supplies!
I am counting down the days (and there aren’t many more now) for that first hammer to fall!
UPDATE: Before I could even post this (I think I started to Monday) So much has happened. We have been very busy getting things ready for Demo this weekend. I pretty much cooked and prepped food for about 24 hours!! But now our Freezers are stocked and I feel so much more ready to be able to still feed my family during the chaos that is fast approaching 🙂
We (and our friend Jonathan ) have been to Lowes a couple times this week. I have to go again tonight to finalize a paint choice and return a couple of things.
Today we will finish packing everything away.
The boys were “helping” me pack the Tupperware yesterday…
Tomorrow it begins!
I’m praying for safety and wisdom throughout this whole project. That we can figure out what needs to be done and how and that we all don’t hate the process.
We are so very thankful for our friends willingness to help us with this gigantic project! And I’m overwhelmed by the the blessing of getting to remodel our kitchen! yay!!
I’m also praying for our boys (and patience with them for me) while everything is a little mixed up from the norm. It’s hard to figure out what and where they should go while we are working.. I am very thankful for the helpful Grandparents and babysitters we’ve enlisted for help with them. But, I know our 4 year old likes things “normal”, and is super curious, so I’m praying it isn’t to ruff on him during all of this process. On the days we aren’t working, I am planning on taking them to the park and play dates/drives… just to keep us out of the construction zone! 🙂
Stay tuned for the next post covering Demo weekend and the first sledge hammer swing! 🙂
There is now a huge pile (ok a few huge piles) of boxes in our garage just waiting for us to test our marriage and communication skills while we assemble them! 🙂 hehehe It’s going to be GREAT!!!
It took a lot of thinking, measuring, planning before we could pick them up. Â I used sticky notes all over my existing kitchen to make sure I have a spot for everything in the new one. Then I attempted to use the Ikea Kitchen Planner on my computer. Â It is a fantastic idea, but the actual program is very difficult to work with because it doesn’t load, jumps around, and takes forever! Â So, eventually I got fed up with trying that and stuck with just good ol’ Â pen and paper!
This was when we were deciding if we could extend the countertops and fit in another cabinet! Because we are removing this wall we have a lot of options here!
Sticky notes everywhere and we taped the measurements on the floor to make sure it was all fitting correctly!
If you are looking into Ikea Kitchen cabinets make sure you pick up ALL of their catalogs and books. They have separate books for cabinets, faucets, sinks, appliances. Â It will give you a full picture of what they have to offer. Â In the end I took the cabinet catalog and cut out all the cabinets I wanted.
See here:
Move cabinets around ALOT! Make sure you really like how it feels and of course that it makes sense. (if you are using existing pipes and things like that you’ll need to make sure some things like sinks are where they belong!)
Then when you are ready to buy, if you can time your trip with the kitchen sales that IKEA has a couple times a year.. you will be very glad you did!! Â The current sale we landed on was 15% back on your full purchase on an IKEA gift card.. which was perfect for purchasing the microwave my amazing husband found in the as is department and some of the fun accessories for inside the drawers.
We decided to go with all drawers instead of shelves and cupboard doors on the bottom cabinets. I like that the drawers pull all the way out and I like the organization so much better!
Now for putting them all together… we’ll need to assemble a couple cabinets/drawers a week in order to have them ready before demo weekend!
So exciting!
Let me know if you have any questions about IKEA.. I’m most certainly not an expert but I have been learning a lot! 🙂
  
  
  
  
          
