Before

I always wondered why "before" shots of kitchen remodels were so bad.  There's junk all over the counters, kids are in the photos, cabinets are open, etc.  I mean, come on!  Didn't the owners know their kitchen was going to be remodeled a few weeks ahead of time?  Couldn't they have taken a photo when the house was clean?  Or (and this really makes me laugh now) couldn't they have CLEANED UP before hand?  

These are my before shots.  Yes, I have known for a few weeks that the kitchen was being remodeled but I never really thought of taking photos when it looked good.  I am busy enough as it is.  There's NO WAY I'm actually going to clean up for a before photo.  (If Scott wants to though, he can do it.  He may care more about a clean before shot.)  Also, it's nice to see a really messy before shot so that the after shots can be even more dramatic.  Right?

Here's Heidi eating breakfast (Life cereal, the rest of Emily's oatmeal and some juice) in the before shot.  The poor kid is sitting on hard plastic.  Her seat pad wasn't dry yet.  It had to have an emergency washing due to a particularly violent case of the threes during dinner last night.  Notice the open cabinets and the FHE geography lesson on the island.  Won't the after shots look great?

Here's what the after shots will have in them.  I picked the floor first and I LOOOOOVE it!  It's not quite this orange in real life but it is this striped.  Each piece is a slightly different color and I can't wait to see how great it looks when it's installed.  The granite is sort of a whitish-gray with tiny red flecks and our slabs have a big dark vein in part of it.  The white tile is a white ceramic subway tile that will go on the back splash.  The blue in the middle is what will go on what's left of the kitchen walls.  

Everything is scheduled to be done by St. Patrick's day so here's hoping the luck of the Irish will rub off on us and it really will be done then.  In the meantime, we are moving all our meals to our play kitchen.  We're setting up in our bathroom (really) because that's the biggest space with a floor the kids can't ruin.  We're just going to pretend we live in Japan and eat around the coffee table and maybe even get to watch TV while we're eating - I'm loving that part already! This might be completely deluded, but I'm kind of looking forward to the adventure of not having a kitchen.  It might be fun. Then again . . . feel free to invite us over anytime!