The 90's called and wanted their kitchen back...

... so we gave it to them, mostly.

Our kitchen was a bland mix of various shades of beige.  It was clean and functional but in need of some serious updates.  The previous owners had done a remodel in the mid-90's but clearly nothing since then.

Picture from our inspection before signing a contract on the house in 2012.

We looked into having the cabinets painted, professionally.  I found that having cabinets professionally painted was in the $2-4k range.  We were fine paying that as long as it was quality.

One of our friends is an architect that designs kitchen for a living.  He had been to our house and we asked his opinion on painting.  He firmly said without hesitation that painting cabinets (even professionally) should only be done if they are in such poor condition that anything would be an improvement.

I recall him saying something like "There is a reason why factory painted cabinets cost 20-30% more than stained cabinets.  It's a complex, 14 step process that can't be replicated outside the factory."  He indicated we would be unhappy with the finish and would just end up having to paint them again later, or maybe even replace them.

That was enough convincing for us to just deal with our cabinets and find other ways to spruce it up.  So... granite and backsplash were definitely on the agenda!

We didn't agonize long over the granite.  Since we will only live here another 18 months at most, we wanted something that would boost value but not cost an arm and a leg.  We settled on "Baltic Brown" which is a Medium to Low cost granite.

We wanted something more modern for backsplash and found a fun, glass tile at Lowes.  The quotes to install it were about $700 so we decided to tackle it ourselves.  To our surprise, it was pretty easy but I would recommend a wet saw to anyone considering DIY tiling.  We bought one for only about $100 and it was worth the investment.

The finished product.  Definitely not the kitchen I would have designed from scratch, but so much better than the 1990's explosion we started with!