Kitchen and Bedroom Design Updates

I always feel badly telling people when we're redesigning something.  With the exceptions of two roofs, one bathroom shower stall, and three broken toilets, everything we've ever done to a house, we've done ourselves.  We've completely done two basements, including hanging drywall, installing a drop ceiling, and running electrical (well, to be honest, my godfather ran the electrical, but you can't count free labor from family as "hiring out").  We've painted sixteen million rooms, built closets, laid both laminate and tile flooring, and installed counter tops.
We've got skills, y'all.  But we've also got five small children and no family nearby to take said small children out of the house for the day so we can work.  This means that things move slooooooowly.  And when the money runs out, the project stops until the money comes back in.  Which usually isn't until tax return time.

But, since I made an extremely public plea for help on my bedroom redo, and it seems that people remember when I say crazy things like that, today's post will be an update on both the kitchen redesign and the bedroom one.  But I'm warning you.  Things are not done.  Anywhere.  Life over here is in a constant state of flux.  Nothing is fixed, not literally, not metaphorically.
Right.  So we'll start with the kitchen, which is so far away from being done that I have to laugh that I'm even showing you these things.  In fact, I don't have a single finished project to show you in the kitchen.  All I have for you is a series of train wrecks, and the pieces of lovely that are waiting to replace those train wrecks.

Let's start with the paint color.  I agonized over this.  I hated the neutral oatmeal color I'd painted the kitchen when we first moved in.  It matched what I painted the rest of the house, but with the pale cabinets, it made everything look blah.  I wanted something dark and blue, but I have a brick wall in the kitchen, and people wisely pointed out that a cool color on the walls would look stupid with a warm toned brick wall.
Only they were polite and didn't actually use the word "stupid".
So 6 paint samples later, we settled on this color:

Which looks weird in this picture, but pretty good in real life.  Only the kitchen is still, after about 5 months, not done being painted, as revealed above.  Why?  I don't remember.  I'm sure there's a good reason, but I don't know what it is.  Honestly, I don't even see it anymore.

Lighting.  Or the unfinished example thereof.

We got these lovely lamps to hang over the kitchen island.  Only once Ken started to install them, he realized that the lights weren't centered over the island, and he was going to have to cut out a whole section of the ceiling, center the lights, then drywall over the spot and cover it with that horrible popcorn ceiling stuff.
Totally something my uber talented husband can do, but not something that he's had time for yet.  So what we have now is a wonderful set of exposed wires dangling out of a hole in the ceiling.  Fun!  And a great conversation starter.

We have some beautiful glass tile in the garage, which I'll show you later on in the post.  It's going to replace the hideous white tile backsplash behind the sink.  As an exploratory measure, Ken tried to remove one of the tiles to see what that demo project was going to entail.  If the fates smiled, the tiles would pop off, the project would be done in a weekend, and life would be good.  If the fates hated us, the tiles would be glued on with something akin to superglue, rip all the drywall off with it, and require massive amounts of labor to remove, then the installation of backer board before the new tile could go on.
Guess which option we got?

Add "Gaping hole in backsplash wall" to the list of fantastic things we're waiting to fix.

Remember that mostly free double oven we scored last winter?  Well, that was the last appliance we've gotten, since we thought we'd take our time, really look at our options, and make a smart choice.  After all, the money was sitting in our bank account and only making more money, why rush?
And then the van went and needed $4000 in repairs, and poof! gone went the appliance money.  Which means we have things like this:

isn't that lovely?  But hey, it was like that when we bought the house, so at least we knew what we were getting in to.  And the cooktop on that awful thing still works, so that means we always have a way to cook food when our power goes out.
Which it seems to do around here with shocking frequency.

Also filed under: whacked out things the house had when we bought it-

giant, nasty looking cracks in the sink.  The grey lego in the drain is ours, though.  But the sink, like the backsplash, has a lovely replacement sitting in the garage, ready to go in.
Someday.

Whenever I'm feeling surly for no particular reason, I'll look around the kitchen and start yelling angrily about it.  Ken keeps (sensibly) telling me that everything is on hold because I want the counter tops to all be wood, and the place we got the original butcher block counter top has stopped carrying it for the foreseeable future, and so we're at a standstill until it comes back in stock.  The backsplash can't go up until the counters are in; it's stupid to put a new sink in to old counter tops, and the appliances would be easier to install into those mythical new counters.
I don't know what the holdup about the lights is, though.

Then fate smiled on us two weekends ago, and dropped 18 feet of solid oak counter top in to our laps, for a mere $15!  18 glorious feet would be enough to complete all remaining counters in the kitchen.  Work could once again move forward!

And then we lost our power for a week.

Since then, sensing my growing agitation over the state of the kitchen, Ken started working on the counters.
He sanded them, and cut one to the measurements of the smaller of the two counters:

I didn't want him to stain them, but then Ken pointed out that the cabinets were so light, did I really want more washed out things in the kitchen?  I thought he was probably right, and that a nice espresso brown would be great.  Then Ken said, "Right.  Probably pretty close to the color it started."  And I said, "But that was red!  I don't want red!  I want dark brown."  And Ken said, "It was sort of brown."  And I said, "You're insane.  That was red.  I don't want red."  And then Ken said, "Honey it's oak.  It'll be slightly red no matter what."

This means I foresee a delay in the counter top installation until we can hammer out what dark brown really means, and exactly how do I force my will onto the oak.

But it's beautiful right now, sitting in the garage.

It'll look really nice with the new, uncracked sink:

And my beautiful glass mosaic tile, which is covered with dust and inexplicably sitting under a pile of free weights...?  Oh, I'm sure that's good for the glass.

Wow.  We're total slobs.  Please, don't be like me and spend more time looking at the periphery in the pictures than the focal point.  Just pretend like everything you saw was surrounded by orderly, sensible objects common to every day life.

This post went on waaaaay longer than I thought, and I'm now so grossed out by my kitchen that I have to go clean it.  I'll do the bedroom redesign (which is much prettier, and almost done, actually) in a separate post later on today- sorry, Brenna!  More waiting.