Home Sweet Home - Part 2

Today, I promised pictures of the kitchen, eating area and I'll throw in the laundry room - since they are all within the same proximity. I think right now, the kitchen is my favorite room...it is where we gather as a family to study, cook, eat, play games, craft, laugh, talk -

and even sometimes dance.

When we bought this house, I thought I loved the kitchen. Remember now, I was coming from a home that was 50+ years old, so this "before" kitchen seemed so modern....

Well it wasn't!

Let me just say...these people did me NO favors with the white tile countertops...I have OCD, so I spent several hours every Saturday - me and a bleach pen - cleaning grout. Ugh.

Thoughts of it almost give me hives!

Needless to say, the wallpaper had to go - along with that 'darling' white curtain thing. To make this area livable, I stripped the wallpaper and, because the walls are not textured (and I am too lazy to do that project), I thought I'd use the Ralph Lauren paint with sand in it (aka suede). Well, let me just say - DOES NOT work well in a kitchen...you can't clean it. Looked beautiful, but can't wipe it down. So, I had to paint over it with the identical color of semi-gloss.

This kitchen project has taken us about 3 years to complete...and we still need to do the floor. We started with paint, lights above the sink, window coverings. Upgraded to granite countertops, new appliances and new hardware on cupboards...

I still need to do floor and I need, um, I mean "want" to paint the cabinets (see my earlier post this month). But I LOVE my kitchen, which is good because I spend A LOT of time in there.

Now on to the laundry room...this was purely a "I'm bored and want to paint something" project (do you ever have those?). I recently added the vinyl from

Wonderfully Wordy and Shelley from thehouseofsmiths.com.

Since this is the first room I see when I come in from the garage, I wanted it to look nice...but I am still not motivated to do laundry in there!

I just used leftover paint from the kitchen and lightened each section with white once I had the bottom (darkest) layer done. I love the way it turned out.

Well, that's it for today. What do you think so far?

I think looking at these pictures and reminiscing about what we've done, how we have made this house a home, it making me fall in love with my home all over again!

Have a great weekend! Monday we'll move on to the family room.

~alicia