Kitchen cabinets!!

This post is rather looooongg...but that is how the kitchen remodel was!  Very long and involved! I think it's pretty safe to say that the kitchen is the heart of the home.  Doesn't it seem to be the room that everyone always ends up in?  Whether we have company over, or it's just the 3(4!) of us hanging out, we all seem to gravitate toward the kitchen.  Probably because that's where the food is.  Or maybe that's just me. :)  You remember my kitchen when we bought it right??

I couldn't exactly do my Rachael Ray thing in there, so there was LOTS to be done!  Our kitchen to-do list looked like this:

-rip out the lovely linoleum floor(s) and replace with hardwood

-tear out existing cabinets and replace 

-replace all appliances

-paint window trim and walls

-add an island

-new lighting
-install granite countertops

-find a farm sink

We knew from the beginning we would probably spend the most money updating the kitchen.  I toyed with the idea of refinishing the existing cabinets, but they were just SO old looking and it would have taken me ages to get them all cleaned out and redone.  Plus, I had a very specific idea in my head of what I wanted my kitchen to look like, and these cabinets just weren't workin' for me!  So......

More DEMO!

Here's my father in law hard at work ripping out the old cabinets! Sorry for the poor photos...you see our light source right?

It was a lot of work!  Well...at least it looked like a lot of work! :)  See me in the corner of the first picture holding the baby and WATCHING? :) Thanks Papa John!

A man and his sledge hammer...

Once they were done, it looked like this.

Pretty crazy right??  You know what else is crazy?  Sitting down for hours with some lady at Home Depot and designing your kitchen cabinets when you have NO IDEA what you are doing!  I knew the look I was going for...so we found the cabinets we wanted pretty easily.  Although there was some discussion about whether or not we should go with dark cabinets like a certain person *cough cough**BEN**cough wanted.  In the end, he gave up and let me have my light cabinets.  Basically because I told him I wouldn't cook him dinner in our new kitchen if I couldn't design it.  :)  Darling boy.

So with a TON of help from the nice lady from Home Depot, (who ended up giving me her cell phone number because I called so often) we got everything laid out and ordered.  She explained to me in detail how to check my cabinets in the day they got delivered to make sure they were all there.  Maybe it's because I was too excited, or maybe it's because we had been sitting there talking with her for 4 hours, but I didn't really pay much attention to the checking in part.  Then, when delivery day came, I walked into my kitchen and found THIS:

Ohhhhhh dear.  Thankfully, my mom was with me and we managed to figure it out.  It only took 6 hours.  Just kidding.  Maybe.

So here are my glorious Kraftmaid cabinets!!

Sorry the pictures are blurry.  It's hard to take pictures when you are jumping up and down! :)  More kitchen renovations to come!