From Lam to Glam

We have a small house.  It's fine for us because it's just the two of us.  There's 2 things I would change about it though, add another bathroom (which is about a year or two away) and have a bigger kitchen which is impossible.  When we moved in we didn't have money to get a bigger model so we got the smallest, most basic model and sadly that meant little to no counter space in the kitchen.  When we decided to remodel the kitchen from builder grade, sterile white everything (cabinets, counters, appliances) to a warmer honey maple with crown molding I maximized every inch of space in that thing.  I took a huge wasted corner of empty space and added a lazy susan which I don't know how we lived without before.  We took out 36" cabinets and added 42" ones.  I added a pantry which isn't huge but gets the job done.  A few years ago we added stainless steel appliances including a double oven which I also don't know how I lived without before.  The final touch was going to be the granite countertops we decided to skip when we did the remodel.  Now don't get me wrong, I loved our laminate.  It was a pretty dove gray that had this almost textured look to it.  It looked great:

When we decided to upgrade to the granite, we fell in love with Black Pearl.  It's almost black but has little bits of grayish and flecks of gold that kind of went with the cabinets.  Those were installed Friday and give the kitchen a completely different look...

I like them, they're pretty.  But dang do they suck the already bad light out of the room!  I kind of miss the light, airy feel of the laminate we had but it was nicked up and we needed to replace it.  I know the darkness of it will wear off eventually, it'll just take a little getting used to.  Here's a close up...

Before people freak out about why we didn't go with an undermount sink, we have a tip out to keep sponges and potato scrubbers and such and we use it all the time.  Undermount sinks aren't compatible with that so that was a no go.  I'm not heartbroken over it, it wasn't that important to me, it just would've been nice had it worked out.

So in the end, I'm happy that part of things are done around here.  We've already given it a pretty hard initiation with a nice spread of things to serve our friends who were putting up our crown molding upstairs.

What did you end up doing this weekend?

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