Kitchen Renovation: Stage One

This is a promised post, I had been waiting in the hopes we would get the trim bought and put in but since it's already been a month and that hasn't happened.. we'll just consider that another "stage" and at least show you the tile.
My brother Daniel laid the tile over the course of four days. It was inconvenient, living without a kitchen and with tile and grout dust being tracked everywhere, but oh so worth it.

these two pictures are from when we bought the house, just trying to show you how nasty the "flooring" we had was.

Once we moved in we lived with this for two years..

Everything is out of the kitchen, well, besides Eowyn ;)

Jerusha enthusiastically watching Uncle Daniel

Mid-process

Our dining room mid-process :P

Finished product, after the grout was well dried and sealed and that dried and it was finally mopped

so shiny and beautiful

and another picture because I'm just so in love

And this little beauty 

For two years I had been functioning using one outlet which was in the back of an upper cabinet. The previous owners had seriously put up cupboards covering the outlet then proceeded to cut a hole through the back on the top shelf. So for two years I ran an extension chord from the top shelf, down to a power strip on the counter; from there I would plug items in. You may notice that I still have an extension chord plugged in but that is due to the fact the previous owners also hung the top cabinets so low that my coffee pot nor mixer can even come close to sitting on the counter so they are over on the side of the kitchen without top cabinets, also without electricity. Ahhh the joys of old houses in process of being updated...

The next stages will hopefully involve removing the top cabinets and replacing them with open shelving and possibly adding electricity to the far kitchen wall but for now I am happy with what I have.

Oh, you may also notice there is a new stove. My grandma got all new appliances recently and generously gave us her old stove. It was awesome timing as the burners on mine had just started taking 5+ minutes to heat up!

So yay! My lovely kitchen floor.

We went with the cheapest real tile in the color I wanted and paid a total of $700, I believe. $500 on supplies and $200 on labor. I know his work is worth more but he gave me a siblings discount ;) He actually would have done it for free but, his work is greatly appreciated and worth more than the couple of Casey's pizza's we fed him.