Kitchen, now with 50% more grout!

It's election night, and instead of constantly refreshing the Google elections results, I'm electing to stare at my gorgeous new tile.

I finished the last bits of tile Saturday night, just in time for us to host a houseful of wonderful people for our friends Faith and Janet's surprise wedding shower. It went off without a hitch - there was so much love in our house I'm surprised it didn't float off the ground - and I am very pleased to know that there is PLENTY of room to have twenty lovely people hanging out with us. It was a great trial run for future holiday gatherings. 

Yesterday I spent four hours grouting and scrubbing the grout, but the extra time and effort was totally worth it. Those lines are PERFECT. I used the leftover charcoal gray grout from the floor, and it really makes the tile pop. I also glued the poor broken corner back onto our beautiful sink, and we will never mention the sink incident ever again. 

Seriously. Look at this:

  Before (with drywall - please ignore my haphazard, paranoid screw patterns)

  During (so grout. such mess. very tile)

I was not expecting tiling a wall to be such a pain in the ass. My tiles were sliding everywhere. Finally, I figured out that applying the grout and allowing it to dry for five or six minutes made it much stickier, and then the tiles would stay (mostly) in place.

And now look at it!

 I'm still not convinced the light over the sink should stay white. I'm strongly leaning toward spray-painting it a matte black right now, but I'm committed to living with it awhile, as my wise project manager husband suggested.  

Originally, I'd planned on painting the upper cabinets white, and staining the lowers with my favorite Minwax red oak, but right now, I'm kind of loving the juxtaposition of the wood with the crisp white subway tile and the dark industrial concrete. The 80s varnish absolutely has to go (it's not in very good shape anyway, and the cabinet doors especially are pretty rickety) but I'm starting to think having that rich, warm reddish-brown wood on the upper cabinets as well as the lowers would look pretty fantastic. (Plus, it would save me from having to paint, and given a choice between staining and painting, I'll choose stain every time.) My next project is the window seats by the back door, so I've got plenty of time to mull over my options. 

Happy belated Halloween! We had 59 trick-or-treaters come to our door, which was more than I could ever have hoped for. It was perfect - most of the kids were some form of zombie, and most of the costumes were home made. I love our neighborhood!!