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….
When most people heard that I wanted to do wall paper in part of my new kitchen they questioned my interior design capabilities! haha and while I don’t know how skilled at all this I am, I will say that if you haven’t looked at wall paper in a while you might be surprised!
My design plan was for one partial wall, as sort of accent wall. We don’t have a lot of busy accents in our space, and lot of mellow grey and white. So I wanted something of a pop and perhaps help soften the more industrial features we were adding to the room! I found so many fun wall paper samples with graphics, words, photos, etc. The one I picked is even washable and pre-pasted!
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!!
This massive amazing garbage disposal is my husband’s pride and joy! haha
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. 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! 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…
It has been way to long! One of the main fears I had when starting this blog is that life would just get busy and I wouldn’t be able to keep up! 🙁 But, I’m still here!
We are 8 weeks pregnant as I type this, and Sickness and exhaustion is a daily battle at this point! My headaches have been pretty bad, but this week seems to be a little break from them! It has been hard to even think about looking at my computer screen and was a main reason why I haven’t posted!
So, let’s see what’s happened….
We made it to the beach! And even tho it was over cast, we had a great family day! The boys loved digging in the sand!
I loved our new shade tent we bought on Amazon!
We had VBS last week and the boys had a great time. I got to serve in the infant nursery with my Mom all week. and we enjoyed loving on the babes! 🙂
Then Friday kicked off the Valley Home Educators convention. This was my first year attending and I can see why so many home school families put it in their schedule every year. The first day, Though a little overwhelming was so encouraging! I sat in a couple of seminars about the charlotte Mason method of teaching. I’m pretty sure it confirmed that should be the direction we head for William. It allows for a lot of creative reading and exploring the world around us as we learn!
Here are some resources if you are interested in learning more:
There are some pretty little touches getting done in DIY Kitchen remodel right now and they make a huge wonderful difference!
First, these lights were hung in place. This is the counter that will have my sink and dishwasher.. also, there will be a bar edge on the other side with stools for sitting up at the counter!
I found these lights at Home Depot! And we added the specialty light bulbs for the antique look! I think they are exactly what I hoped for!
Also this trimming was added to the light box
Little things like trim make such a huge difference!
The Fridge and pantry cupboards were moved into place and I was able to even move stuff in! So that really helps having more items in the kitchen instead of spread through-out the house!
Eventually, the plan is to get a nice big fridge and then above it between the two tall cabinets we’ll do a couple of open shelves!
We are still plugging along. We are cooking with our new oven quite a bit despite the heat. And of course still over using our crock pot and bbq.
But we are doing fine and with amazing results like these how could we not be excited??
This is how the boys stayed busy while the guys were working! Rolling cars down the driveway!
Also, our family has a little announcement!!!
We are so very excited to be expecting our third little blessing! It’s amazing!!
This was our announcement picture… I think it turned out pretty funny! 🙂
I hope you are enjoying our DIY kitchen remodel updates! Are you dreaming/planning for a remodel??
One of the fun little projects that I’ve been able to accomplish during the giant kitchen project is revamping my spices! They will be going into a nice big drawer.. much better then the previous basket organization I had! trust me on that one!!
I bought racks from Ikea when we picked up the cabinets.. Amazon has some similar styles. But there are so many great ideas for spice racks and organization.
In this picture you can see I printed my labels on regular paper to test them out.
I wanted to check the size and which way I wanted to place them on each jar… I also printed out a couple other label samples to pick from but ended up with these!
The jars I decided on were from Cost Plus World Market, But, again there are soooo many to choose from!
Amazon also sells these sticker pages for the printer! I am in love with these!! And can’t wait to make labels for everything!!! 🙂 These labels feed into your printer just like paper.
and then you simply cut out your label and
peel off the back paper to reveal the sticky side.
I read a tip about them on pinterest,
saying that you should wait 15 minutes between
printing sheets and cutting them out so that the
ink dries completely, this would also be true if you
are printing more than one page so that it doesn’t smear each other.
William helped me fill the jars! It was a fun little project for us to work on together!
There are lots of label options as well.. many pinterest finds were great.
These fun labelshere orherewere some of the many I thought about using.
But Ultimately, I decided to just create my own with a fun font in Word. I thought this might help when I want to add more later!
I think I’m going to love these when I can put them in the new drawer!!
And apparently I have way more spices than I realized. I started with 21 jars.
I have at least 15 more or so.. But I’ll just add them soon (maybe the next time I get a coupon for World Market! :))
Have you reorganized your spices? What do you love about it?
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Cleaning the oven…. yeah that chore is certainly one of my very least favorite household tasks! But, now that I have an awesome new oven I knew I needed to find something that can help with keeping it beautiful!
I found these handy liners on Amazon!
I wanted something to help with keeping our new oven clean and I have to say that I like the way these look and fit. Plus clean up is soooo much easier this way!
The bottom one fit exactly. And the one I wanted on the rack just needed a trim, I also cut a little bit more into where the handle on the rack is! These were easy to trip with just scissors!
This company also has a cool roll out dish drying rack, It is now on my ever growing Amazon wish list 🙂
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
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. 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. 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! The oven and microwave together just has such a sleek look! very fancy!
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 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!!! 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!!)
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! 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? 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!!
Eventually, the plan is to get a nice big fridge and then above it between the two tall cabinets we’ll do a couple of open shelves!
In this picture you can see I printed my labels on regular paper to test them out.
