I get by with a little help from my friends

Y'all, there really wasn't anything wrong with this house when we bought it. 

See?  The before was really pretty.

A couple of months before we moved in, we started working on our redecorating budget.  We had some money to spend on the house up front, so we focused on projects that would make the most impact and would be easiest done before the big move.

Number 1 on our list was paint all areas of the house but the bedrooms.  We ended up hiring this out and it was THE BEST redecorating decision we've made.  There are a lot of tall walls, aspen ceilings and square footage to deal with.  We left it to the professionals, and I'm so glad we did.

paint = BIGGEST impact

Number 2 on our list was to re-tile the kitchen back splash.  Since the biggest common area of the house is the big rectangle with the kitchen attached to one side, we decided that after the paint on the walls, the tile on the walls needed to go next.

I fell in love with the clean texture of glass subway tile.  It has just enough reflection that you feel like there's sparkle without actually having sparkly things.  I've been in love with some shade or another of aqua for forever.  So I chose an aqua glass subway tile.

Honey took a week off work. The first part of the week we planned on working and painting.  The second part of the week, my parents and brother came and we planned on moving.

The very first minute we were in the house, I took before pictures of the kitchen.  While I finished photographing the rest of the house, Honey started tearing out the old tile.  We also took out the corner appliance garage to give us a bit more counter space near the cook top.  You can barely see it in the before picture, but removing it did give us what we wanted.

Our goal was to demo day 1, lay tile day 2, grout and move on to something else day 3.  Because it happened to be Homecoming weekend in our little town, that didn't quite work out, but we did finish in about 5 days.  We recruited a friend that is a professional to lend us his tools, help us get started, and rescue us from the hairy spots.

I've decided that another big impact thing can be changing light fixtures.  Months before we moved, I purchased new pendants for over the bar and I finally got to see them installed.

So, here's where we are today, minus the fall decor.  This picture was actually taken the first part of November, but we haven't done anything since then.  No, I haven't painted the other black bar stools to match the aqua one.  I will eventually...

Also, while planning for the new house, I fell in love with the two tone kitchen.  Mainly, the white upper cabinets and stained lower cabinets kitchen.  The cabinets in this house are all custom, wood, hand built and stained and installed.  Am I crazy to want to paint the uppers white?