Pink Countertops, Begone!!!

I can't be more excited than to share how well the countertop transformation came out. When we bought the house, it had a lot of pink. We were able to get rid of a lot, but the rest is stuff that could cost us a lot of money to replace - i.e. our pink counters. For our kitchen we need to remove the linoleum floor, remove the wallpaper, paint and tile the backsplash. We had talked about getting granite now, but we eventually want to redo the kitchen and just don't have the funds for an entire new kitchen right now. I came across Countertop Transformation which is available at Lowes for $250. It comes with a lot stuff, but you will need to buy other things such as specific paint rollers, painter's tape, paint trays, etc. You must watch the DVD that comes with it to really understand the work that goes into it. I did our counters the day before we left for a week's vacation because you need a full 7 days for it to cure. Here are pics of our kitchen before.

The first night, I had to sand down the countertops with a diamond embeded sanding tool, basically scrapping off all the gloss. After that I painted each section with the black bonding paint, followed by the wetting agent, which was pretty much a glue. After the glue came the decorative chips that you spray all over (with a special contraption) covering all the black. This needs to sit for 12 hours/overnight to set/dry. This is what it looked like that night.

The next morning I had to sand down the decorative chips again, vaccuum everything up, then applied the gloss. After this we left for vacation and came home to brand new countertops!! They look amazing. I'm so happy with how they came out and can't wait to do the rest of the kitchen.

Next up is adding drywall to the holes in our walls that was covered by pink formica, followed by glass tile backsplash.

April, already!

I can't believe it's been so long since I've last posted. I guess mostly it's because I didn't know what to write about and now today I realized how much I could have written! So, this might be a long post.

Within the last 2 weekends we removed all the shrubs and bushes from the front and side of the house. I was in a lot of pain for about 4 days, which was a bit odd to me especially since it was my hamstrings. I didn't have this pain last year when we ripped out the entire backyard! Here is the house with full bushes (and snow).

Here is the house with no bushes!Here is the beginning of the retaining wall

The retaining wall is all done and we filled it with dirt. Now we just have to get some flowers and plants to fill it in. I'm excited to have Spring and Summer colors in front of the house! I just need to find nice ones that are shade only since the front of our house gets no sun.

After the retaining wall was finished, we cut off two large branches from the tree in our backyard. It's a dying tree that doesn't offer any type of shade. It's really an eyesore more than anything and we plan to have it taken down completely. By removing these two branches we will have less mess and bird poop on our furniture.

I love doing this house work. Next up is doing the countertop transformation in our kitchen and refinishing the tub in the bathroom upstairs. No more pink is on the horizon!