New countertops!

Hello ! It's been a while since I've blogged. I started a new job on September 1st which has me working later days. So updates on the house dwindled. One great thing about the job is back when I interviewed with the company my husband told me that if I got the job we could get new counter tops and a faucet for the kitchen. Most of my home updates have been do it yourself and fairly budget/low cost. Counters are the biggest upgrade we have done...well other than the roof and the garage door but those were both necessary a not really blog worthy.

We decided to go for laminate because we have a small 3 bedroom ranch and don't plan on being in this house forever. The neighborhood we are in isn't bad but it isn't quite granite counter neighborhood. We're (I) am saving that for a future house. The wonderful thing about laminate nowadays is it is much nicer than years ago and has a stone look.

Since this was a bigger job, I opted to have Lowes do the tear out and install. Scheduling for this was quite a pain in the butt. They use subcontractors and the people were VERY nice but it was difficult and very frustrating to schedule both the measuring and the install. It all worked out.

Along with the countertop we got a new sink and a new faucet. My husband is pretty neutral on most of the home updates but since we don't have a dishwasher, a new higher, better faucet was definitely a welcome improvement that he was happy about.

Here are some before and after photos of the counters.

After putting in the  new counters I realized that the silver temporary wall paper back splash just wasn't cutting it. Here you can see what it originally looked like before I put the silver up. So I decided it was time to invest a little more money and update the back splash for real.