We have a functioning kitchen!!!

Getting to a functioning kitchen during this remodel has been a long process. The counters came in mid Feb, almost a month later we installed a working stove and microwave!

Painted kitchen but no new counters yet:

New Counters:

New cabinet eventually for the kitchen aid mixer and coffee pot:

Tom installing back splash:

New double oven:

Fancy fire place...

The fireplace was ugly, really ugly when we bought the house. After the carpet the next thing we did was smash up the fireplace. We saved the mantle so we could reuse it. We decided to go with a product called air stone from Lowes. It's a relatively inexpensive product but wasn't necessarily the best quality to work with. Tom did an excellent job getting it up on the wall and having a nice color variety. It took a while but the end result was worth it. I cleaned, deglossed, primed and painted the old mantle so Tom could hang it back up! This is all that in pictures:

Original ugly fire place stone:

New fireplace going in (might as well fix the leaky chimney while we are in there...)

Drywalled and ready to paint and stone:

Re-finishing the old mantle. I scrubbed it with goof off and de-glosser then took out the nails and everything:

Primed the mantle with Fast Prime 2 and then painted it with 2 coats of Dutch Boy cabinet and trim paint in white:

Hearth Stones:

We used air stone from Lowes to do the stone for the fireplace

Put the mantle up and added our engagement picture and the log from the head table at our wedding: