I am taking on one room at a time. The house was in pretty icky shape when I got it. I took a month to work on it before moving in and managed to get the bedroom and den liveable. In hindsight, that was probably the wrong order, but remodel and learn!
I didn't really mean to do the kitchen until summer. The blowing up of the dishwasher moved it up the ladder some. Plus my ignorance in knowing what a screwup it would become! Had I known, I likely would be eating on paper plates and disposable bowls right now!
This is actually only phase one of the kitchen. Phase two involves adding cabinets. The existing cabinets are in good shape and are paintable, so I was able to just replace hardware and clean them up. I still have new hinges to put on all the doors, bu there's no rush to that. Cabinets are the big money eater, I'm told. So that's some years down the road.
Redfeathers- the floor is an Armstrong vinyl. I found the original samples at Home Depot and Lowe's and then went to the Armstrong website and ordered the big samples to lay all over the floor. I think the style of it was Urban Settings and mine is in shades of grey. It has a slate grey under-color and then lots of flecks of greys and whites and black all over it. That same style came in variations with blue underneath and green underneath. Both of those were really lovely too. I was trying to keep my kitchen in the period of the house and was trying to keep it pretty neutral too so I went with the grey. The floor actually makes me think of the linoleum that my grandmother had on her kitchen floor when I was growing up (so decades and decades ago!).
It's so hard with the dogs running in and out of the muddy yard all the time. That floor stays smudged with dirt. You can only tell on the new floor when you see it at an angle (the dirt changes the shine of the floor). When you stand in the kitchen you can't see it at all! I still have to sweep and mop of course, but I no longer feel like it's a futile effort!
The new countertops are in that same color family and have the same dirt hiding qualities. Very nice since I can't convince the cat to stay off of them!
