I love my kitchen!

We got new countertops and put up the tile back splash last week. We are just trying to do the finishing touches like put the plates back on the outlets, etc. It makes such a world of difference. I have hated those brown butcher block-looking countertops since the day we bought the house. It was always one of my least favorite features. I can not express my dislike for them enough. So I was ecstatic to get new ones! And I love them.

We decided to get Quartz countertops and I've had a lot of people ask why, so here's the explanation. We were narrowing down choices between laminate, granite, quartz and solid surface. We (Josh mostly) really didn't want laminate. I don't like granite because of the maintenance. So it was down to quartz and solid surface. From the quotes I got, they cost approximately the same. I've heard good thing about solid surface, but not raving reviews, and I pretty much hadn't heard anything about quartz. So I did a lot of research and a lot of pondering the pros and cons and decided the pros outweighed the cons on the quartz, so that's what we got! Can I just say, I love it! Have I said that already?

We also got a new sink. It is an undermount which is so awesome for wiping crumbs into! I highly recommend it. It is also so much deeper than my old sink, I feel like I have to go deep sea diving just to find dishes. It is great and my faucet is so nice too.

We also had a laminate back splash, so we had to tear that off too. I've always wanted a tile back splash because I think they look cool, so lucky me, that was the easiest way to go anyway. Picking the tile was by far the most difficult part. You have a billion choices. And as Anders said, "I mean, of course you want the back splash to match the countertops, because if it didn't match then nobody would ever want to buy our house (not that we're moving anytime soon after all this work), so of course it has to match, right?" But, even matching you still have half a billion choices. Anyway, the choice was made and we put it up. It took longer than I expected, so we spent 6 hours Friday night from 9pm to 3am putting it in with the awesome help of Josh's parents again. I don't know why these projects take until three in the morning. (if you'll recall that's how late we were up, with Josh's parents' help, ripping up the old flooring) Maybe next time we should do them on a Saturday or maybe we should start earlier, oh well. And a HUGE thanks to John for getting the tile for us cheap, that was very nice of him to do. Now I'm just waiting for the stove or fridge to die so we can get a new one of those too and make the look complete.

I forgot to take before pictures, so I had to go through all of our pictures. I found some that showed the old counters and back splash pretty well, so look at the background, not the foreground.
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Here are the "after" photos.