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Have you ever read the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie? It’s about a cute little mouse that innocently asks for a cookie but then he needs a glass of milk to go with it. And if you give him milk then he is going to need a straw. And if you give him a straw he is going to need a napkin. You can see how this can go on and on.
Fixing up your 10 year old house is kind of like that. A few years ago we finally got around to painting our builder beige walls. I picked a lovely gray (Thunder by Benjamin Moore) that is nice and warm. This is important because it’s gray around here a lot so we needed to make sure the color didn’t feel cold! When I painted the walls I realized how much I loved all my white woodwork with it. It made everything look so much more bright and modern.
That change ALSO made me realize how much I really disliked my black countertops and backsplash. Ugh! They suck all of the light out of the room. I’d put up with it for 10 years, though, so it was time to finally update that part of the house. (Merry Christmas to Mr. Fun and me!) Here are the before pictures…
I knew I would be keeping my wood cabinets (they match all the woodwork on that side of the house…remember…if you give a mouse a cookie) so the counters and backsplash were the focus. I picked white quartz with medium sized speckles for interest. Quartz is awesome because it is super durable and never has to be sealed. I LOVE maintenance free!
Because I wanted the backsplash to tie together the counters and the walls I picked carrara marble. I love the variation in color it offers (this particular batch is Pietra) and the two inch hex tiles really show off that variation and up the hip factor. I love how random it is. (I can’t do random myself. My brain just can’t handle it. I literally have to plan it out. Good thing these tiles came in 12×12 sheets already randomized!)
Because the builder must have gotten a great deal on that black granite tile we had it everywhere. It wasn’t just in the kitchen. That meant we have a nice fresh looking desk area and fireplace too!
For the fireplace I decided to do something slightly different and I chose a herringbone carrara marble tile with white grout. Let me take a moment here to sing the praises of our tile guy Dave. We hired him through NW Stone Fabricators. (I should give a shout out to Sergio too because the counters with the invisible seams are amazing too!) Dave was so detail oriented. I was really clueless about tiling and what we might need so he fabricated border tiles for us that finish the edges perfectly and look amazing. Seriously, look at that fireplace!
One of the best things about this remodel was that it really only took six days. (We had a little snafu and had to order a few more tiles so Dave had to come back for his last day a week later.) That’s not bad for such a big change!
Now on to the next project…Mr. Fun gave this mouse a cookie…