Kitchen and Family Room Updates, Part 1

Good Afternoon!! It's such a beautiful day, although exceedingly hot and sticky, that's for certain!!!! I decided to post about our Family Room/Kitchen combo this afternoon because these rooms, mainly the kitchen, are going through a couple of much desired changes/upgrades such as new kitchen counter tops and the addition of a chic modern glam back splash, which we have yet to explore then pick out, as well as some fresh new lighting that will hopefully make the room feel light, bright, airy, clean, and modern, but still glamorous and playful.

Searching for granite counter tops is definitely a task, but I Jon and I have found that going through the granite slab yard is the best way to truly get a feel for the pattern and stone itself; Small samples barely allow you to explore the depth and detail of the counter top as a whole. For our last house, we purchased our kitchen counter tops from Home Depot, which proved to be a fairly good idea. Here is our kitchen in our previous house, after renovations. I realize it's extremely difficult to even see the counter tops in the 1st picture, and in the 2nd picture just try to ignore the adorable creature climbing over the ceramic apple soup bowl. (Also, we had this beautiful glass tile and stone back splash installed for a great price, which we're planning to do again in the new kitchen, about which I'll go more into detail in the next post.)

KITCHEN IN OUR 1ST HOUSE (after much needed renovations)

This time, we decided to go to a slew of places that just specialize in stone or counter tops to check out their selection without going through a middle man (which usually takes you to a slab yard anyway) Long story short, we've been looking for a couple of months for the most beautiful counter top at the most affordable price, and each place we went to brought us to the same conclusion - There are two counter tops that we're absolutely head over heels in love with and they are available at all the places we visited, only more affordable at one particular place, so we decided to go with them. We were given a couple of samples to take home with us, which are gorgeous, but like I said, doesn't do the counter top as a whole, justice, because you're not seeing the movement and detailed pattern. This passed Friday, measurements of our existing kitchen counter tops were taken. Here are some photos from our counter top selecting process!!

Counter top 1 : (it looks much bluer in the photo than it is live)

 Counter top 2 :

Here are the samples we took home :

Here is the exact slab we choose, after much contemplation :

Our new counter top will be installed this coming Friday - Can't wait!!

We've selected and installed our new kitchen lighting, an incredibly gorgeous glamorous chandelier, that lends itself to a modern fresh airy aesthetic. We found this beauty at Lowes, on CLEARANCE, then on CLEARANCE on top of the CLEARANCE!! We scored this breathtaking light which I'm totally in love with, plus bulbs and everything, for under $80!! Amazing deal, considering everything else was over our price range, and not as beautiful and lavish!! Only problem we didn't fore see was fitting the chandelier in my corolla, in which case we needed to take all the separate pieces out of the box just to get everything in the car!!

 Here's Jon reading the manual before installing the light fixture!! He's awesome at installing things!!

 

And here is the beauty!! I LOVE IT!!

As for our family room, we're taking on a few minor updates. There's nothing more inspiring than a beautiful fresh summer Mantle!! I love turquoise, green, lime, and cream and really tried to bring out that gorgeous color combo on my fireplace mantle in my family room. Every couple of weeks, I slightly move things around, but for the most part, this is what it looks like and even in the cool winter months, my family room is decorated with a light summery aesthetic in mind!!

Jon has decided to extend our fireplace by building a fireplace surround, which will hopefully add much desired depth and drama to the hearth. In general, I'm always looking to add more chunky architectural details to the family room. That's about it for this room, for now. 

Well, I hope you enjoyed our Family Room/Kitchen updates!! Please stay tuned for Part 2 of this post, which will consist of our plans for a glass tile back splash, then (hopefully), our completed kitchen.

TO BE CONTINUED...