our kitchen remodel: phase 1

recently it dawned on me that i have really been lacking in the picture taking department lately. this occurred to me when i was standing in our front yard admiring our half-started landscaping project yesterday afternoon. we have so much going on and until now, i have no pictures to mark our journey through any of the different projects we've started around the house!

it all began a couple of weeks ago, when we decided to remodel our kitchen countertops. they are in desperate need of a makeover and poor mario has been working his butt off working his day job, going to school in the evenings and squeezing in this time consuming project whenever he can. as i mentioned earlier, i failed to take a true "before" picture of our kitchen, so in attempt to make up for what i've missed, i decided to capture an image of what our kitchen currently looks like...it is a mess but you can't really tell from the angle in this picture that we have clutter scattered everywhere. however, since the kitchen is partially under construction, this is what we have to live with until the project is complete. the back countertop and the center island are already in the works of getting re-made and so far, we are really pleased with the results. we didn't have a huge budget for this project so we went with a basic laminate surface and mario is doing all the work himself, from cutting the plywood to gluing the laminate. more pictures will come as this project progresses...it's not a fast moving project, but will be well worth the wait once this phase is complete.