Kitchen Makeover Starts

We've officially been living in our house for one year and done woefully little since we've moved in.  One big project I'd like to tackle by summer time is the kitchen.  It came to use in its original form from the '50s - yellow and all.  When we purchased the house, we had planned on gutting the kitchen but finances ran short from the basement remodel and the kitchen had a retro charm that was definitely workable.  (Above are a couple of bad shots.  I didn't have the foresight to take pictures.) With all the holiday entertaining and Tuna's 2nd birthday, we finally got around to working on a couple of things.

And tadaa!!  It's not a big reveal but better than before I think.  First, we changed out the backsplash from the yellow tiles to white subway tiles.  Even though it was our first attempt at tiling, I think it came out fairly nicely.  The hubby gave up watching playoff football to do all the tile cuts. I had really wanted to remove the yellow laminate countertop but I think it kinda works with the new tiles.

Here are pictures of the work in progress.  The hubby did a nice job of making the cuts around the circular vent.  We had thought about just smoothing out the wall and painting but I'm so glad that we took the extra step.  Just this one project definitely makes a big difference.  The white tiles make the kitchen look cleaner and larger.

Now for the important stuff.  The tiles were the cheap ceramic tiles from Home Depot.  We purchased a hand cutter but it didn't do a great job of making cuts, so we bit the bullet and bought a tile cutter - the cheapest one from Amazon.  We'll have to do some more tile work to make the purchase worth it.

-2 boxes subway tiles:         $40
-Acrylic Pro tile adhesive:     $14
-Polyblend grout:                 $14
-Stainblocker:                      $20
-Grout float:                         $2
-Trowel:                               $4
-Tile spacers:                       $4
-Tile cutter:                          $50
TOTAL:                              $148

The second project was adding the cafe curtains.  I just picked a fabric from my stash and used an iron-on adhesive to make the curtains.  It only took the length of one nap time and cost only about $10 for the tension rod and clips.  I don't know why I waited so long to do this.  So easy and surprisingly pretty!