Bottoms up!

Everything in life starts with a good foundation. You know...like you have to learn the alphabet before you can read...or you have to walk before you can run...or apparently you have to know basic math before getting married to this guy:

HAHA! "Just whack it right in half."
Okay okay...where was I? Oh right...foundations! So after removing the cabinetry in our kitchen we found that the hardwoods were not original to the house and were in fact added onto the existing linoleum around the custom built-in cabinets...which meant if we weren't going to be putting cabinets back in the exact same spots (which we aren't) we would definitely need to fix the floor.

We can't have a good kitchen without a good floor for it to sit on! So we started moving EVERYTHING out of the kitchen, patched up the holes in the walls, and called a floor repair/refinish guy.

He patched up our floor and sanded her nice and smooth. Can you tell where the island was? At this point in the process we wanted to paint the walls and ceiling before our floor guy stained and sealed the floor.

We ran out of time on the walls but we did paint the ceiling a nice clean white. I decided to go with an eggshell finish since we have textured ceilings (if we had flat ceilings then eggshell would show more imperfections than a flat paint would) and I've been so happy with it....makes the ceiling just the littlest bit of a shine.

Then our floor guy stained and polyurethaned the floor...

At first I was really disappointed with the floor. I had picked a stain color called Dark Walnut and was expecting a deeper, darker color to come out on our red oak flooring...something that would really provide a high contrast for our white kitchen cabinets. However, the darker you go...the more you see - like scratches...and paw prints...and fur collecting in the corners! So, i'm thinking that I sorta love the color they are and am SO happy I didn't get it any darker!

We will be moving in the cabinets soon...one step closer to a kitchen we really love!